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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26362114">blessed with a wilder mind</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/opinionhaver69/pseuds/opinionhaver69'>opinionhaver69</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, CW: deep dive into harrow's shitass mental health, CW: discussions of suicide and terminal illness (also occurring offscreen and in the past), CW: parent death (offscreen and in the past), F/F, harrowhark comes to terms with the mortifying ordeal of being known, lightly implied background camilla/palamedes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:40:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>26,807</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26362114</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/opinionhaver69/pseuds/opinionhaver69</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Gideon,” replied Harrow, thoroughly bored of this interaction already and taking no pains to hide it. “There’s been a noise complaint about your social gathering, and as it is…” – she made a great show of checking the watch she didn’t own and therefore wasn’t wearing – “…ass and balls o’clock in the morning, I’m here to tell you to break it up and go to sleep like good little children.” She made sure to infuse ‘social gathering’ with the exact same tone of withering condescension she’d use to say, like, ‘debauched orgy’ or ‘World War II LARP session’ or ‘tea party with Ronald and Nancy Reagan.’ </p><p>Predictably, Gideon ignored her. Instead, she slouched even harder and more bonelessly against the doorframe and held her hand to her face in an upsettingly decent imitation of the thinking emoji. “Ortus again?” she asked eventually, her tone carefully pruned of all discernible emotion.</p><p>“I take my role as senior resident of these halls of accommodation very seriously, as you well know, and it is my duty to investigate all complaints promptly and vigorously while protecting the anonymity of the complainant,” said Harrow officiously. “But yes, it was Ortus, because he is a big girl’s blouse.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>296</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>blessed with a wilder mind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>please check the tags for content warnings! title is from the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QORhV7rCRHc">wilder mind</a> by mumford &amp; sons.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harrowhark strode down the carpeted hallway, came to a stop outside Gideon’s door, and knocked sharply, her bony knuckles making a disproportionately sonorous impact against the varnished wood. Satisfied, she stepped back and waited. The raucous noise from inside dipped, then, as the door scraped open over the badly fitted carpet, spilled out into the hallway, rushing over Harrow in an abrupt and unpleasant wave of sensory overload.</p><p>“Harrow,” said Gideon, her long and lanky body suddenly filling up the doorway, leaning up against the frame in a manner that Harrow would simultaneously describe as ‘louche’ and ‘immensely fucking affected.’ “Right on cue.”</p><p>“Gideon,” replied Harrow, thoroughly bored of this interaction already and taking no pains to hide it. “There’s been a noise complaint about your social gathering, and as it is…” – she made a great show of checking the watch she didn’t own and therefore wasn’t wearing – “…ass and balls o’clock in the morning, I’m here to tell you to break it up and go to sleep like good little children.” She made sure to infuse ‘social gathering’ with the exact same tone of withering condescension she’d use to say, like, ‘debauched orgy’ or ‘World War II LARP session’ or ‘tea party with Ronald and Nancy Reagan.’</p><p>Predictably, Gideon ignored her. Instead, she slouched even harder and more bonelessly against the doorframe and held her hand to her face in an upsettingly decent imitation of the thinking emoji. “Ortus again?” she asked eventually, her tone carefully pruned of all discernible emotion.</p><p>“Gideon, I take my role as senior resident of these halls of accommodation very seriously, as you well know, and it is my duty to investigate all complaints promptly and vigorously while protecting the anonymity of the complainant,” said Harrow officiously. “But yes, it was Ortus, because he is a big girl’s blouse.”</p><p>“Standard,” said Gideon. “Next time, tell him he’s invited. He’d probably have a lot more fun if he just came to the party instead of sitting alone in his room honking his clown nose to an audience of no one.”</p><p>“Doubtful after last time,” called Palamedes from inside.</p><p>“Last time?” asked Gideon, mystified, craning her head around to look at him.</p><p>“Last time he showed up, when you asked him about his poetry collection and then you were like ‘Oh, that’s easy, listen to this –’”</p><p>“Ah,” said Gideon, in a tone of dawning remembrance.</p><p>“And then you, Ianthe, and Coronabeth all told him dirty limericks –”</p><p>“Mmm,” said Gideon.</p><p>“You tried to rhyme <em>Nigenad</em> with <em>gonad</em> –”</p><p>“Yes, well,” said Gideon wistfully. “Poetry isn’t my discipline.”</p><p>“You don’t have a discipline,” said Harrow. “You wouldn’t know what discipline was if it leapt up and bit you on the ass.”</p><p>“I totally have a discipline,” said Gideon. “Wanna see my pecs dance?”</p><p>“Absolutely not, and this is all beside the point,” concluded Harrow with grim satisfaction. “The point being, party’s over, break it up, everyone go home, <em>etc.</em> and so on <em>ad nauseum</em>, don’t make me repeat myself, Gideon, you know I’m very busy and important.”</p><p>“Yeah,” replied Gideon, shooting for <em>sotto voce</em> and missing by a country mile. “Mathematically extrapolating a way to manoeuvre the stick farther up your butt than was previously thought possible by science.”</p><p>“…And as an addendum to the hasty conclusion of your little <em>get-together</em>, I would implore you to please not talk about my butt, ever.”</p><p>“Why not?” asked Gideon, fixing Harrow in her disconcertingly direct amber gaze. “You just brought up mine. Stop projecting your gluteal fixation onto me; that’s a little too Freudian for a Sunday evening, don’t you think?”</p><p>“Freud?” said Harrow scathingly. “You’re trying to own me with <em>Freud?</em>  Where did you get your A-levels, clown school?”</p><p>“It’s alright, we were just leaving anyway,” said Dulcinea Septimus, materialising suddenly at Gideon’s side before Gideon could snipe back. “Protesilaus and Naberius’s workout scheduling has devolved into another heated argument about how many days there are in a week,” she said in a conspiratorial aside, her expression and tone both equally placid, “and to be perfectly honest I could do without a repeat of that one.”</p><p><em>(“A week is NOT!!!! Sunday to Sunday!”</em> came Naberius’ indignant exclamation as if on cue, drifting all-too-clearly from a distant point behind Gideon’s left shoulder. <em>“It’s Sunday to Saturday, SEVEN days!”)</em></p><p>Gideon grimaced ruefully, conceding easily to Dulcinea in a way she never would to Harrow. “Alright, yeah, good shout.”</p><p>“I’ll be sure to see you soon though, Gideon,” said Dulcinea, in a tone that made Harrow think of kittens wrapped in velvet and could therefore only be described as <em>nauseating</em>. It was her turn to grimace, which she did, freely and without reserve; never let it be said that Harrowhark Nonagesimus didn’t fully commit to a grimace. She scarcely had time to dwell on it, though, as the motions Dulcinea made towards departing seemed to provoke everyone currently piled haphazardly into Gideon’s appropriately student halls-sized bedroom into getting up, clapping each other’s shoulders amicably and shrugging themselves into layers of coats and outerwear.</p><p>Behind Dulcinea, Protesilaus appeared in the increasingly crowded doorway, slinging a protective arm around her narrow shoulders. With his free hand he reached out and clasped Gideon’s bicep in a distinctly bro-to-bro manner. “Of course, there are two types of muscular hypertrophy,” he proclaimed inexplicably and with zero prompting, gazing intently into Gideon’s amber eyes. “Myofibrillar…” – his voice lowered near-seductively – “…and <em>sarcoplasmic</em>.” There was a beat of silence, then he loosened his grasp without another word and squeezed both himself and Dulcinea past Harrowhark and into the hall. Gideon and Harrow exchanged a mystified look, briefly united in bemusement.</p><p>“Baffling,” said Gideon, nonetheless awed.</p><p>“Truly,” said Harrow, for once too disconcerted to argue.</p><p>“Wow, Harrowhark, you’re looking delightfully funereal this evening.” Ianthe Tridentarius’ melodic voice announced itself half a breath before the woman herself, assailing Harrow’s ears like the aural equivalent of a bad smell. As tall as Gideon but maybe half as wide, she slid through the doorway like a singularly bitchy wraith. “I’m serious,” she said, scanning Harrow’s body with her pale eyes. “Really banging, uh, shroud. Very goth if goth, like, couldn’t really be arsed that day.”</p><p>“Always a pleasure, Ianthe,” said Harrow, without inflection. Ianthe blew her a kiss in response, then turned her gaze back to the party, lingering in the hall as her sister Coronabeth flirted her way across the room to the exit. “Oh <em>honestly</em>, Corona,” she muttered under her breath, her tone exasperated.</p><p>“Must suck to be the twin no one likes,” said Harrow.</p><p>“You would think, wouldn’t you,” replied Ianthe loftily, her eyes still on her sister. Presently, Coronabeth wriggled her hips through the mass of people at the door, waving her hand gaily above her head in a wordless, sightless farewell to her numerous fans and orbiters. Substantial where Ianthe was wispy, she kissed Gideon effusively on both cheeks, then sashayed down the hall on towering heels, her sister following wordlessly behind her as part of her reluctant retinue.</p><p>“Goddamn,” said Gideon appreciatively, cheeks faintly pink, as Coronabeth turned the corner and disappeared from sight. “Hate to see her leave, but <em>man</em> do I love to watch her go.”</p><p>“Urgh,” said Harrowhark. “And on that entirely disgusting and horrible note…”</p><p>She inclined her head stiffly towards Gideon in as un-amicable a manner as she could physically manage, then turned on her heel, twisted her way through the mass of people now congregating in the hallway, and left. “Keep the noise down in future,” she called over her shoulder in farewell, knowing all too well that Gideon wouldn’t.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Back in the comfort of her own room – slightly bigger than Gideon’s, because being the senior resident of a uni dorm came with perks, however minor – Harrow allowed herself to relax fractionally, tension easing its way out of her muscles as the silence once again curled itself around her shoulders, solitude heavy and soothing as a weighted blanket. She felt peculiarly disjointed, as she always did when called upon to break up one of Gideon’s parties, which was particularly unfortunate seeing as this was an occasion that arose on at least a biweekly basis, on account of how Ortus Nigenad was a total fucking narc.</p><p>With a sigh, she dropped down onto her thin mattress, pulling her knees to her chest so she could rest her chin on them, her spine a gently curved C. Her desk was overflowing with papers and books, all materials for her postgraduate thesis, which currently existed mainly on the corkboard hanging above the desk in the form of miscellaneous scraps and excerpts linked together by a haphazard mess of drawing pins and string. (“I’ve connected the dots,” Harrow had earnestly told Mercymorn, her thesis supervisor, at their last fraught meeting about the state of Harrow’s research. “You didn’t connect shit,” had been Mercymorn’s blunt, unimpressed response, overriding Harrow’s insistent “I’ve <em>connected</em> them,” and the meeting had deteriorated sharply and predictably from there.)</p><p>She was meeting Mercymorn again the next morning, Harrow remembered with a creeping, burgeoning sense of the exact opposite of joy. It was already late; ordinarily, this would suggest sleep, so Harrow promptly slid off her bed and sat at her desk instead, bending over the heavily annotated copy of <em>Rebecca</em> that lay open and waiting for her on its pitted wooden surface.</p><p>
 <em>‘Mrs Danvers came close to me, she put her face near to mine. ‘It’s no use, is it?’ she said. ‘You’ll never get the better of her. She’s still mistress here, even if she is dead. She’s the real Mrs de Winter, not you. It’s you that’s the shadow and the ghost. It’s you that’s forgotten and not wanted and pushed aside…’</em>
</p><p>Harrow underlined the passage twice, then sat back, troubled and uneasy. Outside her window, the night progressed, the colour of the campus lawn shifting beneath the lightening sky from darkest black to a weary, solemn grey.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The following morning, Harrow left early, her body powered by energy drinks that tasted heinously bad and black coffee that tasted worse, a fun combination that had a higher-than-zero chance of killing her stone-cold dead one of these lacklustre mornings. Her dorm – informally known as the Ninth House simply because out of all the university’s nine halls of accommodation it was situated the furthest distance from the main grouping of university buildings – sat stolid and silent in the fresh early morning air. It was the final week of February, and winter still lay heavily over campus, sending cold rivulets of ice water down the windowpanes and crisping the artificially bright grass so that it crunched beneath Harrow’s boots.</p><p>She had slept, eventually, but not for long, and not well. Her eyes felt gritty, and her tongue tingled unpleasantly from the radioactive Poundland Red Bull knockoff she’d forced down before leaving her room. Overall, she wasn’t feeling Great about Stuff, and she scowled ferociously at the fat little winter bird watching her beadily from a nearby fencepost. Her reasons for heading out so early had, in fact, been twofold: firstly, it just took a stupid amount of time to walk anywhere on campus from the annoyingly distant Ninth, and secondly, she’d been hoping that prior to 9am on a Monday morning most students would still be in bed nursing hangovers from the previous night. On this last count she’d been disappointed. Despite the early hour, there were plenty of people milling about between the dorms, standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the narrow pathways that led to the lecture halls, pissing Harrow off more than she already was.</p><p>“Move, infants,” she snapped at a pair of hateful first-year undergrads dawdling directly in her path outside the Fourth House dorms, interrupting their undoubtedly awful conversation (“And they were <em>roommates</em>,” the girl one was saying, firmly triumphant, prompting her friend to echo “Oh my God, they were roommates,” in a breathy voice, his eyes implausibly wide and impressed). They scattered out of her way like frightened ducklings, which cheered Harrow up a little bit. She strode past them, her knee-length cape-like black coat billowing out behind her in the wind.</p><p>The building she was headed to was right at the centre of campus, a turreted 19<sup>th</sup> century edifice in which the faculty offices of the English department were located, in part, Harrow suspected, because it looked like a miniature castle and every faculty member belonging to the English department was goth as all fuck. She arrived outside it within fifteen minutes of leaving her dorm, and took a second to compose herself, before pushing open the heavy oak door and climbing the two narrow, twisting flights of stairs to Mercymorn’s office, designated as such by the sign hanging on the door proclaiming Mercymorn’s name, job title (Professor of English Literature) and area of expertise (Romanticism, a distinctly ironic choice for someone who so successfully gave off the impression that she had never once experienced a single feeling). Harrow was still five minutes early, which Mercymorn openly hated, so she rapped her knuckles against the door with obnoxious punctuality.</p><p>Mercymorn’s sigh was audible even through her closed door. “Come in, wretched child,” she said, her tone emotionless.</p><p>Harrow pushed open the door. “Good morning,” she said with over-the-top politeness, pulling the shitty uncomfortable guest chair away from Mercy’s desk so that she could sit herself down in it.</p><p>“Is it?” asked Mercy flatly, brushing a long skein of peach-coloured hair away from her strangely ageless face with a single elegant hand. “I have yet to see the evidence of that.”</p><p>Harrow didn’t respond, but instead concentrated on maintaining her ramrod-straight posture, silently communicating her earnestness to have Mercymorn start tearing coldheartedly into her work, the most fuck-you gesture of pedagogical respect she could muster. <em>Yes,</em> her body language strove to articulate, <em>please tell me promptly and at once all the ways in which I confound you with my insurmountable stupidity. </em></p><p>“Well,” said Mercymorn eventually. “I received the email you sent me with your work in progress, and I have to say, Harrow, as much as I hate to – it’s a promising start.”</p><p>Harrow’s eyebrows shot upwards, entirely without her consent or involvement.</p><p>“I mean, don’t get me wrong, at this juncture there’s far more wrong with it than right, but regardless. For a tiny little baby inexplicably let loose on a university campus, this is pretty good work.”</p><p>“Thank… you?” Harrowhark managed, caught off guard.</p><p>Mercymorn chose not to acknowledge this, but continued. “To be quite honest, your main problem right now is cohesion. Vaguely, you have your thesis statement – an analysis of the female spectre, the revenant body in these works of Gothic literature – <em>Frankenstein, Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, et cetera.</em>; but how else are these works connected? Not by period, certainly, or by theme, and seeing as you do frequently veer away from the Gothic canon, this is important for you to pin down. If you were approaching the topic from an explicitly feminist standpoint, then perhaps that could be your connective tissue, but…” She trailed off, lifting her hands in the air in the universal gesture of ‘this is your problem, not mine, sort it out.’</p><p>“Um,” said Harrow, intelligently. “It’s – conceptually, they’re already linked, right? It’s the commonalities in the depictions, ageless, incorruptible –”</p><p>“Not in <em>Frankenstein</em>, though,” said Mercy, her gaze sharp and intuitive. “What’s the connection between, say, Heathcliff’s Cathy and Frankenstein’s female creation – <em>‘deformed and horrible?’</em>”</p><p>“Well, for a start, there’s the torment, the obsession,” said Harrow, pulling a sheaf of papers from her bag and flicking through them until she found the part she wanted. “Frankenstein’s monster says it, here; <em>‘“Shall each man,” cried he, “find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone?”</em>’ – and in <em>Wuthering Heights</em>, so does Heathcliff: <em>‘Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you – haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers.’</em> The monster is psychologically undone by Victor Frankenstein’s refusal to make him a wife; so too is Heathcliff through Cathy’s death.”</p><p>“Mmm,” said Mercymorn, inscrutable. “At best, tenuous. Can you even describe Frankenstein’s female monster as a revenant?”</p><p>“Yes!” said Harrow, not without outrage. “She’s literally made of dead people!”</p><p>Mercymorn considered this, inspecting her nails – painted the same shade as her hair; immaculate – then shrugged blithely. “And besides,” said Harrowhark, deciding to interpret Mercy’s silence as acquiescence and forging on. “The contrast is important, too; Frankenstein’s woman is corporeal, with all the ugliness that goes along with that – the mess and the entrails, and so on – so she has to be destroyed, right? Not like the absent Rebecca, or the ghostly Cathy –”</p><p>“<em>I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid,</em>” began Mercy, quoting perfectly and emotionlessly from memory, her expression unchanging, “<em>and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again – it is hers yet – he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it…</em>” She shifted in her chair, regarding Harrow impassively. “There is engagement with the physical corpse, no? And in <em>Rebecca</em> – you even include this passage in your preliminary outline: ‘<em>It was dissolved of course, there was no flesh on it. But it was a body all right. He saw the head and the limbs.</em>’ Hm?”</p><p>Not for the first time, it occurred to Harrow that she would have the world’s most devastating crush on Mercymorn if Mercymorn didn’t spend 90% of their interactions making her feel like an embarrassingly dense infant and the other 10% being inordinately sadistic for, presumably, shits and giggles.</p><p>“I’m not your therapist, Harrowhark,” Mercy continued ruthlessly, immediately vindicating Harrow’s last thought, “but to me your work reads mostly as an exercise in self-indulgence. It feels less like you have a point that you’re trying to convince me of, and more that you’re just looking for cause to be morbid at your own leisure, which, by all means, but perhaps… not so much in your master’s thesis. So,” and here she placed both her hands palm-down on the table, making direct eye contact with Harrow across the expanse of wood that separated them, “I strongly suggest you find a way to isolate and narrow down your focus before we meet again.” She smiled sweetly, which was alarming. “Wouldn’t you agree, Harrowhark?”</p><p>“Yes, Mercymorn,” said Harrow, feeling like she’d just been run over by eight consecutive trucks, and that the eighth had then braked, revved its engines, and reversed backwards over her as a decisive final measure.</p><p>“Excellent!” said Mercy, displaying absolutely none of the virtue she was named for. “Well, you know where the door is, feel ever so free to use it. As you exit. Which, imminently, you shall. Goodbye now!”</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>On her way out of the building, Harrow ran into Ianthe.</p><p>“Oh,” said Ianthe, the expression of surprise sounding odd in her detached, drawling voice. She swept her gaze over Harrow’s form in the singularly disquieting way she had, head to toe then back again, then stepped back and held the door for her.</p><p>“Thanks,” Harrow said grudgingly, moving forwards so that Ianthe could let go of the door and using her elbow to prop it open momentarily so that she could hoist her backpack higher onto the shoulder of her other arm. “Bye,” she tacked on as an afterthought, already letting the door fall shut behind her.</p><p>“Wait, Harrow –”</p><p>Harrow stopped, more from the novelty of being held up than from any desire to be further engaged in whatever Ianthe thought passed as conversation. She turned, inquisitive: Ianthe was standing in the space Harrow had just vacated, her eyebrows drawn together in an expression that Harrow would have read as anxious, were she seeing it on the face of literally anyone else.</p><p>“I was just thinking –” Ianthe broke off, resting her hip against the doorframe in a way that would have been distractingly alluring in a sex panther kind of way if it had been Coronabeth doing it, but seeing as it wasn’t, merely reminded Harrow inexplicably of Gideon, standing in her doorway the night before and looking down on her with catlike eyes. “I’m going to be on my own tonight, and I get dreadfully bored on my own, so… Maybe if you wanted to meet up and study together? Or something?”</p><p>Harrow frowned. “I thought that’s the only reason you kept Naberius around, to keep you entertained when Coronabeth isn’t there. Don’t tell me he’s got himself a social life.”</p><p>“Worse,” Ianthe bemoaned, with a languid, posh-girl shoulder shrug. “He’s got himself a job. Bartending, or… not bartending. Something. I don’t know, I wasn’t really listening.”</p><p>“So, he’s procured himself gainful employment, in potentially literally any field, doing potentially literally anything.”</p><p>“Pretty much, yeah. Well –” Ianthe hesitated. “I mean, probably not rocket science, this is Babs we’re talking about.”</p><p>Harrow considered this for a second, her head tilted to the side in contemplation. “Yeah, fair,” she said eventually.</p><p>“And anyway, Coronabeth’s going on a date with Gideon, and –”</p><p>“With <em>Gideon?</em>” said Harrow, her tone sharp with surprise.</p><p>“Yeah, I know, gross, right?” Ianthe made a face, a grim little moue of distaste that Harrowhark thoroughly, thoroughly agreed with. “But yeah, like I said, they’re all busy, and I have nothing to do, so –”</p><p>“Sorry,” said Harrow abruptly. “I can’t tonight. I have to – I’m busy. Doing something else. Sorry.”</p><p>Ianthe shrugged, her features arranging themselves once more into the impenetrable mask she always wore, and her tone was as bored and supercilious as ever when she spoke again. “Sure. Cool. Yeah, no worries, I figured… Well, I thought I’d ask. Seeing as you’re always alone and stuff, I thought maybe you’d want the company. Whatever though.” She stepped out of the doorway, and in the closing gap between the door and its frame called out, “I guess I’ll see you around.”</p><p>Weirdly stung by her parting words, Harrow stood still for a second, frowning lightly at the space Ianthe had occupied, now just a closed door.</p><p>-</p><p>Half an hour later, back in the safety of her room, Harrow leant to pick up the folded piece of paper that had been pushed hastily beneath her door. Curiously, she unfolded it – it was a torn piece of standard notepad paper, with a clumsy – and anatomically <em>very</em> incorrect, there should <em>not</em> be a bone there – skeleton doodled in one corner, a speech bubble emanating from its hanging mandible that contained the words ‘Sorry for party rocking! xoxo’ in Gideon’s messy, sprawling handwriting. Despite herself, Harrow half-smiled, then crumpled the paper in her hand and tossed it into the wastepaper basket.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>“Thesis problems?” asked Palamedes Sextus sympathetically.</p><p>“Why do you ask,” ground out Harrow between gritted teeth, Palamedes barely even visible through the piles of books stacked haphazardly around her.</p><p>“Well,” replied Palamedes mildly, “because it’s almost 11pm on a Monday night, and you’re in the library. Normally Cam and I are the only ones here at this time.”</p><p>“This is true,” Camilla acknowledged, poised and serene. “Nerds we may be, but at least we're self-aware about it.”</p><p>Harrow exhaled heavily, elbowing a small heap of books to the side so that she could rest her head on her outstretched arms. “I’m so tired,” she admitted, keeping her voice quiet, speaking more to the tabletop than to the two people now pulling out chairs beside her.</p><p>“You’ll be alright,” said Palamedes, his tone bracing but gentle. “You’re with Mercymorn, aren’t you? She’s notoriously difficult to work with.”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Harrow. “Every meeting I have with her is like, ‘Hey Harrowhark, time for your 4pm dick flattening,’ and I just have to take it like ‘<em>Yes Mercymorn –’</em>”</p><p>“Try not to worry about it too much,” said Camilla. “At least, don’t take it personally. She almost made Palamedes cry when he was working on <em>his</em> master’s thesis. On more than one occasion.”</p><p>“Yup,” said Palamedes cheerfully. “A lot of panic attacks in bathrooms, that year.”</p><p>Harrow made a wordless noise of commiseration, then lifted her head slightly, her worn-out gaze landing with effort on Palamedes’ kindly face. “You’re planning your doctoral dissertation now, is that right? Who are you working under?”</p><p>“Augustine,” Palamedes said glumly. “It’s worse. Trust me. He keeps unearthing obscure 14<sup>th</sup> century erotica to make me practice deciphering Middle English; you wouldn’t <em>believe</em> how furiously horny those medieval aristocrats were.”</p><p>“Rough,” said Harrow, crinkling her nose in an expression of profound distaste. She sighed, propping her chin on the back of her arm, then found herself speaking again without even really intending it. “It’s not just that,” she said. “It’s – I have to do well. Better than well. I <em>have </em>to. There’s no other option for me.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a second, pre-emptively embarrassed. “We’re literally sitting in a library named for my mother right now. My parents were pioneers in their academic field. It’s not like I can graduate from their alma mater with just a nothing grade in a liberal arts subject, it’s not enough that I did my undergrad a year younger than everyone else.” She felt weakened, slightly, by the admission, although it was made marginally easier by the fact Camilla and Palamedes weren’t really her <em>friends</em>; were, instead, functionally just glorified acquaintances, whose opinion of her didn’t much matter.</p><p>“Ahh, parental pressure,” said Palamedes. “I understand it, you know. My mother is an academic too. Although, to be fair, I don’t think she’d mind if I dropped out, as long as it meant I moved back in with her full-time.”</p><p><em>It is really, really not the same,</em> Harrow wanted to say, but she kept her mouth shut. She’d shared enough already, and she knew that Palamedes meant well. Instead, she slumped back down, exhausted, letting her mind drift while Camilla and Palamedes pulled books from the dusty shelves and conferred between themselves on matters about which Harrowhark knew nothing, their intellectual, esoteric discussion a comforting haze to lose herself in. She stirred only when her phone buzzed, some ten or twenty or one hundred minutes later. Squinting down at the screen, she saw the little red exclamation mark that heralded a notification on the intra-university messaging platform, and swiped her thumb sleepily across the screen to open it.</p><p><em>ortus_nigenad:</em> Harrowhark, why is the fire brigade pulling up outside the Ninth?</p><p>Harrow sat bolt upright, suddenly wide awake, tapping out a rapid response.</p><p><em>harrowhark_nonagesimus:</em> excuse me what??? i’m in the library, i don’t know anything</p><p>She closed the chat, and immediately opened up another one, her mind automatically whirring through a slideshow of catastrophic possibilities.</p><p><em>harrowhark_nonagesimus:</em> what happened and how was it your fault</p><p>She waited impatiently, drumming her nails against the tabletop as she watched her correspondent type, indicated by the scrolling ellipsis that quickly appeared beneath her message.</p><p><em>gideon_nav:</em> coronabeth got stuck in a window</p><p><em>gideon_nav:</em> totally not a big deal dude</p><p><em>gideon_nav:</em> don’t worry about it</p><p><em>gideon_nav:</em>  :~)</p><p>Harrow resisted the urge to thunk her head back down into the tabletop, and instead pushed her chair out, getting to her feet and wincing uncomfortably when her back twinged in about sixteen different places. Palamedes and Camilla both looked up at her inquisitively.</p><p>“Is everything alright?” asked Camilla, as Palamedes courteously picked up her bag and handed it to her.</p><p>“Yeah,” Harrow said distractedly. “I mean, probably? Hopefully? Gideon got Coronabeth stuck in a window.”</p><p>There was a pause. “…<em>In</em> a window?” said Palamedes eventually, his expression politely befuddled.</p><p>Harrowhark sighed wearily. “So I hear. Yeah. I have literally no idea.”</p><p>“Okay, go handle the unruly children,” said Camilla, ushering Harrow away with her hands. “Oh, hey, do you want us to keep these books out for you?”</p><p>“No, it’s fine,” said Harrow absently, already heading for the door with a vague nod of acknowledgement to the librarian at the main desk. As she went, she unlocked her phone again, hesitating for a brief second before giving in and typing out a text to Ianthe.</p><p><em>harrowhark_nonagesimus:</em> maybe discourage your sister from going on any more dates with gideon nav</p><p><em>ianthe_tridentarius:</em> ?</p><p><em>harrowhark_nonagesimus:</em> she’s in a window</p><p><em>ianthe_tridentarius:</em> i beg your pardon????? is that a euphemism for something vile</p><p><em>harrowhark_nonagesimus:</em> no, as far as i’m aware she is literally stuck in an actual window and the fire department are literally actually there</p><p><em>harrowhark_nonagesimus:</em> i’m on my way back to the ninth now, i’ll let you know</p><p>In response, Ianthe sent a row of emojis: a skull, a person throwing up bright green bile, a thumbs up. Harrow locked her phone and slid it back into her pocket, hastening her pace.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The fire brigade was pulling out as Harrow arrived, their headlights casting a wide yellow arc across the driveway. The beam briefly illuminated Gideon, an impressionist blaze of black and orange, as it swept across the façade of the Ninth; she was leaning casually against the wall directly beneath the second-floor bathroom window, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her oversized leather jacket and her broad shoulders hunched in against the cold. It was clear to Harrow that the window above her had been the one involved in the incident – granted, Coronabeth was no longer stuck in it, but that in part could surely be attributed to the fact the window itself wasn’t there anymore. The empty frame that had previously housed it gaped owlishly into the night.</p><p>“What did you <em>do?</em>” said Harrow exhaustedly, drawing to a slow stop in front of Gideon.</p><p>“Actually,” said Gideon, “I didn’t do anything. She got herself stuck in the window entirely of her own accord.”</p><p>“How does that even <em>happen?</em> How do you get stuck in a window?”</p><p>“Well, it turns out the windows have, like, two layers? There’s an inside layer, and then a gap, and then the outside layer, and Corona got wedged in between them.”</p><p>“What was she even doing?” asked Harrow, a vague sense of hysteria mounting in her throat. “Trying to escape?”</p><p>“Hey,” said Gideon, faux-affronted. “I resent that implication.” She kicked away from the wall, her combat boots leaving scuff marks against the stonework. “But also I can’t tell you. On that matter, I’ve been sworn to silence, and on my honour as a lesbian –”</p><p>“I truly cannot stand you,” said Harrow with feeling. “Who’s going to sort out the replacement window?”</p><p>“Jeez, I’ll do it,” said Gideon, looking straight at Harrow with her unnerving eyes. “Unclench. I’m not completely useless, you know.”</p><p>“No, you just can’t take anything <em>seriously,</em>” said Harrow, her tone unexpectedly ferocious even to her own ears. She was tired, her bones hurt, and now there was an entire window missing from the dorm it was her job to manage. “You have no sense of responsibility, of – of <em>duty</em> –”</p><p>“Harrow,” said Gideon, her voice perfectly, frustratingly level. “You do realise you’re simping for a building right now. You do, hopefully, also realise how deranged that is.”</p><p>“<em>Jesus,</em> Gideon! You know we’re probably going to have to pay for this, right? At the very least? I can’t lose this job, I don’t have anywhere else to go –”</p><p>Gideon exhaled, a short, sharp, angry noise, and stepped closer to Harrow. “Okay,” she said, “let me just –” and she held up her hand in front of Harrow’s face, ticking things off on her fingers as she spoke. “Firstly, dickhead, you’re not going to lose your job over a <em>window</em> that was involved in an <em>accident</em>, especially taking into account the fact you weren’t even here when it happened. Secondly, even if you did get kicked out and had to look for accommodation elsewhere, which you won’t, well, hey, welcome to the real world! Just because you’ve never once left the university’s womb doesn’t mean there aren’t millions of people who somehow manage to survive perfectly well outside of it and I have no doubt you’re competent enough to be one of them, despite your blatant and overwhelming slap-me-in-the-face privilege. Thirdly, I already told you I’d sort it out, which also encompasses paying for it, and fourthly, I think it’s immensely fucking rich that you’re crawling up my ass about it, when, as I’ve already told you, <em>I actually had nothing to do with it.</em>”  She finished, her breath coming hard and fast, and then, when Harrow said nothing, stepped back with a small, harsh laugh, her shoulders slumping visibly. “Like, goddamn. If it’s expensive I’ll just post a GoFundMe. You really need to chill out.”</p><p>Harrow stood still for a second, feeling the impact of Gideon’s words like ice-cold water trickling down the nape of her neck. “I can’t <em>chill out,</em>” she said slowly, eventually, her tone hollow. “You don’t understand – you don’t even know me –”</p><p>“Yeah, well,” said Gideon evenly. “Whose fault is that?”</p><p>“Let me rephrase, then,” said Harrow. “I don’t – want you to know me.” There was a spreading numbness buzzing in the back of her brain; she felt suddenly certain that if she didn’t lie down within the next five minutes she was going to collapse. “Look, I don’t actually care what you think of me. Just get the window sorted out, Gideon, alright?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Gideon, her mouth a thin, tight line. “Okay. Whatever.” She nodded once, curt, then turned, shouldering open the door to the dorm with unrequired savagery and disappearing promptly into the darkness within. Out in the cold night, Harrow stood for a moment longer, watching her breath mist in the silent midnight air.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>“Well, there won’t be any more dates,” announced Ianthe several days later by way of greeting, shifting Harrow’s papers out of the way without asking and folding her long limbs down into the chair beside her.</p><p>“Pardon?” said Harrow, attention yanked suddenly away from her research. She was in the library again, but this time, seeing as it was 4pm on a Saturday, she was in the company of more than just Camilla and Palamedes: they were there, of course, because they had about as much social life as Harrow, but so was Protesilaus, frowning over a slender book on the physical sciences, Dulcinea in the wheelchair she often used doodling delicate flowers on his massive arm, and Abigail Pent – who Harrow dimly recognised as a married mature student, enrolled, she thought, on one of the university’s STEM courses – sat nearby, her eyes magnified by her spectacles as she tapped away on her laptop, entirely absorbed in whatever it was she was doing.</p><p>“Corona and Gideon,” said Ianthe, visibly exasperated at having to provide context to statements of which she clearly felt the meaning was obvious. “Coronabeth won’t tell me what happened with the window, just that it was ‘the worst thing ever’ and ‘like, a total secret,’ so I can only assume that it was worse than the time Augustine and Mercymorn both hooked up with the Dean at the department Christmas party last year.”</p><p>“Gross,” said Harrow, remembering the incident in question.</p><p>“I know, right?” said Ianthe. “Anyway, it means I have my sister back, so I won’t be forced to rely exclusively on Babs for company. Love him, but he’s very…”</p><p>“Boring and stupid?” Harrow offered.</p><p>Ianthe paused, considering. “Yeah,” she said after a second, with a rueful sigh.</p><p>There was a mild commotion at the door, and in came Gideon – “Speak of the devil,” murmured Ianthe – followed swiftly by Coronabeth, who rushed past Gideon without looking at her and took a seat on Ianthe’s other side, tossing her long blonde hair back over her shoulders with perfect statuesque composure that was only slightly marred by the blush staining her cheeks.</p><p>Gideon ambled up to the long central table more slowly, collapsing down next to Protesilaus. “Corona,” she said, sounding long-suffering and weary, “I know that I saw things that ideally shouldn’t be seen until marriage, or at least, like, the fourth date, but you know you don’t have to <em>actually</em> run away from me.”</p><p>Coronabeth’s blush deepened, and still she refused to meet Gideon’s gaze. Instead, she reached for the book nearest to her and pulled it open to a random page, holding it so close to her face that all Harrow could see of her was the top inch of her crimson forehead.</p><p>Harrowhark, too, couldn’t quite bring herself to look at Gideon. Borrowing from Coronabeth’s strategy, she stared icily down at the pages of her notebook, making a couple of unnecessary notes in the margins.</p><p>“Remember,” said Protesilaus suddenly into the awkward silence that had fallen over the room. “Amino acids are the building blocks of protein.”</p><p>“Okay!” said Gideon, after a short pause of the type that usually followed one of Protesilaus’ statements. “And, uh, mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Don’t forget that one either.” She winked roguishly at Dulcinea, sitting on Protesilaus’ other side with a look of calm amusement on her wan face.</p><p>“Some of us are actually trying to work in here, you know,” said Harrow coldly, hearing the prissy note in her own voice and not really giving a shit about it.</p><p>“Not me,” said Ianthe, getting to her feet in blatant disregard of the desperate, imploring look Coronabeth was shooting her from over the top of her book. “I just came in to annoy Harry.”</p><p><em>“Harry?!”</em> replied Harrow and Gideon simultaneously, in near-identical tones of disgust.</p><p>“Byeeeeeee!” said Ianthe brightly, ignoring them both and wafting towards the exit in a shimmering haze of gilt and gauze.</p><p>“Ugh,” said Coronabeth, for once the less composed twin, rising and following her sister.</p><p>“Sometimes I wish I’d been assigned to the Sixth,” mused Harrow to no one in particular, her eyes on Camilla and Palamedes, whose heads were bent closely together as they pored over a book, somehow completely unbothered by the noise that was currently bothering Harrow really quite a lot. “Then maybe I could study in halls, actually uninterrupted.”</p><p>“No you don’t,” said Gideon, her tone carefully, deliberately light. “You secretly like that the Ninth is cool and badass, I bet. And besides…” – she followed the direction of Harrow’s gaze – “…I hear they’re actually privately, like, mad horny in the Sixth. Total freaks.”</p><p>“Yep,” said Camilla, not lifting her head from her books. “Final-year PhD students are frequently, secretly fond of each other,” added Palamedes in a quiet, corroborative murmur.</p><p>“You are all degenerates,” pronounced Harrow with deliberate hauteur.</p><p>“Better than the Third House,” said Dulcinea lightly in her babies-in-flowerpots-wearing-knitted-hats voice. “It’s all dusky rose wallpaper and O’Keeffe paintings and artful nude prints on the walls. Like being inside a giant vagina.”</p><p>“Damn,” said Gideon, in the distinct tone of someone who couldn’t quite help themselves. “I should have visited Coronabeth more often when I had the chance.”</p><p>-</p><p>Half an hour later, as the library doors were swinging shut behind Harrow, a hand shot out and stopped their motion. Gideon’s red hair appeared in the gap, and then the rest of her followed as she squeezed her way through the closing doors. “Hey – Harrow, wait up,” she called, her eyes darting around furtively as though to ascertain that they were alone in the hall.</p><p>Reluctantly, Harrow slowed, then stopped, turning to face Gideon fully and raising her eyebrows impatiently as she waited for her to speak.</p><p>“I just wanted to say –” Gideon hesitated, glancing down at the floor with uncharacteristic awkwardness. “The, uh, the window. It’s getting sorted. You don’t have to worry about it.”</p><p>“Okay,” said Harrow frostily. “Thanks.”</p><p>“And, um.” Gideon exhaled heavily, tilting her head back and staring up at the ceiling with an unreadable expression on her face, before righting herself again and releasing her next words in a rush, her nose wrinkled as though they tasted unpleasant. “I also wanted to apologise for the other night. What I said – I was out of line.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Harrow.</p><p>“I mean…” Gideon scrubbed a hand over her face in frustration. “I was out of line, but also, kind of, I wasn’t?”</p><p>“Huh,” said Harrow. And then, because she couldn’t quite stop herself: “Nice apology, shithead.”</p><p>“No, listen – I know I shouldn’t have said the stuff about you being, like, super privileged.” Gideon sighed and broke off, her gaze drifting past Harrow and landing on the engraved plaque on the wall that proclaimed they were standing outside the <em>Pelleamena Novenarius Academic Library</em>. “I was projecting my shit on you and it was fucked up and – and presumptive, and unfair.”</p><p>“Oh, you think?” said Harrow, ruthlessly cutting. “Because, yeah. You don’t actually get to make sweeping comments about my privilege as if you know anything –”</p><p>“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you, asswipe, can you stop being smug and condescending and just shut up for a minute?” Gideon’s contrition, having evidently reached its limits and exhausted itself, lapsed into irritation, and she narrowed her eyes down at Harrow. “I was wrong to do that, sure, but –”</p><p>“But?” said Harrow, her eyebrows shooting up in disbelief.</p><p><em>“But,”</em> Gideon persevered doggedly and firmly. “You can’t say you don’t do that same exact shit to me.”</p><p>“Excuse me?”</p><p>It was Gideon’s turn to look disbelieving. “Yeah, Harrow, I mean – come on. Ever since I started here three entire years ago you’ve taken every opportunity to make it blatantly obvious you don’t think I belong here, like, at all. I’m graduating this year and you still clearly think I’m just God’s shitty mistake. And I get that I’m just an undergrad and it’s like, codified into your genetics to disdain people who didn’t go to university right after leaving <em>Little Lord Fauntleroy’s Sixth Form College For Fancy Boys And Girls</em> or wherever it is you went, but still – every time we talk it’s ‘You don’t even <em>have</em> a discipline, Gideon,’ or, ‘which <em>clown school</em> did you go to, Gideon,’ and it’s just... it’s a lot, okay? Most of the time, I don’t exactly need your help feeling like I don’t belong here.”</p><p>“Ah,” Harrow managed, after a long pause.</p><p>“So,” said Gideon. “Yeah.” She slumped back against the wall, her features smooth and superficially unperturbed save for the slight crease between her eyebrows, her chest rising and falling almost imperceptibly in the low early evening light.</p><p>“Okay,” said Harrow slowly. Her mind was whirring, a mess of conflicting thoughts in which none were quite distinct or well-formed enough to stand out. There was a heavy ball in the pit of her stomach, tight like a clenched fist, a cold, churning feeling that she wasn’t particularly interested in identifying. “You know, it’s not like I wake up in the mornings like ‘Wow, it really bothers me that Gideon Nav goes here, how shall I make her feel unwelcome today’ or whatever, right?”</p><p>“You don’t?” said Gideon, at once joking and humourless.</p><p>“Yeah, I don’t… I don’t really think about it like that.” Harrow leaned against the opposite wall, gaze dropping to the tips of her own steel-capped boots.</p><p>“So how do you think of it?” said Gideon, uncharacteristically patient.</p><p>“Well. I mean – honestly, I don’t.” Harrow shrugged, uncomfortable, and raised her eyes to meet Gideon’s. “I didn’t really mean any of it to come across that way. It isn’t personal. It isn’t about you.”</p><p>“Wow,” said Gideon. “You know, I have to say it’s actually not super reassuring to hear that you kind of, like, repeatedly make my life a misery without even thinking about me while you do it.”</p><p>“It’s just – frustrating, okay?” Harrow shrugged again, a short, jerky motion held in check by her rigidly unbending posture. “I’m under a lot of pressure to do well here and I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you with a book, which, whatever, I don’t give a shit, but then it’s <em>my</em> business to make sure all the <em>fun</em> you’re having doesn’t come at the expense of other students’ ability to actually <em>work.</em>”</p><p>“Huh,” said Gideon, her face inscrutable, looking down at Harrow beneath half-lowered eyelids. “I mean, I think you’re significantly overestimating the actual impact I have on people who aren’t you, but – okay.”</p><p>“And why do you even care what I think of you?” said Harrow abruptly, brusquely changing tack before Gideon could wander further down that path. “You don’t care what I think about anything else.”</p><p>Gideon huffed out a laugh. “Don’t I?” she said, her lips quirking upwards in a wry, self-deprecating smile.</p><p>“Not that I’ve noticed,” said Harrow. “Maybe if you did you’d actually keep the fucking noise down one of the fifty thousand times I’ve asked.”</p><p>“Oh, but then you’d never visit,” said Gideon lightly, and Harrow couldn’t remotely tell if she was joking or not.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The next week passed in a haze of research and studying. Harrow stayed holed up in her bedroom, mostly, listening to dirge-like music as she read and scribbled down notes until the lyrics and the paragraphs she underlined began to swim together in a tangle of eloquent grief. She went to lectures, half-listened, returned to her room; went to the library, passed time as the silent, studious bystander to Camilla and Palamedes’ affectionate bickering, came back, slept. In her dreams, her mother sat at the foot of her bed, corpse-pallid arms extended out to her, asking: <em>What did you learn from the Tillamook burn/Or the Fourth of July?</em> In her dreams, Harrow reached back for her mother, could say nothing except: <em>Be with me always, take any form, drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you. Oh God, it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!</em></p><p>Night after night, Harrow woke cold and gasping, the sky still dark outside her window. Invariably, she was alone; she would rise, sit at her desk, run her fingers over her printout of the death mask of <em>L’Inconnue de la Seine</em>, taking comfort in the corpse’s peaceful, unlined, smiling face, until her heartrate had calmed and her hands had stopped shaking.</p><p>Perhaps most unnervingly, there were no noise complaints from Ortus that week at all. Whether Gideon had abstained for Harrow’s sake, at last, or whether she was too busy to invite people over, Harrow didn’t know; maybe neither of these were true and Gideon was instead resorting to extreme and unusual measures just to avoid having to see her. Either way, Harrow felt aimless and antsy, and often caught herself checking her phone when it hadn’t buzzed at all, feeling oddly disappointed at the blank and silent screen.</p><p>It almost came as a relief, after all that, when the humdrum mire of the following Thursday was interrupted by the furtive rustling of another note being slid underneath Harrow’s door. Harrow scrambled out of bed with a haste that would have embarrassed her had anyone been there to witness it, but she’d barely talked to anyone in five days, and what she thought of as her admirable lone wolf instincts were beginning to cede – grudgingly – to a small, abashed yearning for human contact.</p><p>The note was short, just one line of Gideon’s shitty handwriting: <em>It’s my birthday on Friday, come celebrate with us!</em> And then underneath it, a grinning skull wearing sunglasses and a party hat, because Gideon Nav was the fucking worst. </p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Harrow hesitated outside Gideon’s door, a carefully-wrapped gift in her left hand and her right balled in front of her, poised to knock. She wasn’t sure why she waited; she wasn’t accustomed to feeling nervous, but the idea of knocking at the door only to actually cross the threshold once it opened seemed bizarre if not outright alien, and anxiety surged in her chest at the strangeness of it. Then she thought of how this would look from the outside to someone like Mercymorn – little baby Harrowhark Nonagesimus standing outside a dorm room, afraid to knock – and scoffed at herself, bringing her fist to the door in a single decisive motion.</p><p>“Come in!” came Gideon’s muffled voice from inside. Harrow turned the handle and entered, closing the door behind her and then leaning her back against it as she looked around Gideon’s room, getting an unobstructed view of it for the first time.</p><p>It was small, of course, poky like all the rooms in the block, but unexpectedly spartan, giving the impression of space where in reality none existed. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture; the bed was being used as a couch, upon which Protesilaus and Naberius were sitting, five feet apart because they weren’t gay, and everyone else was lounging around on the floor, drinks and ashtrays resting on a low table in the centre of the room. <em>You’re not allowed to smoke in here,</em> Harrow thought but pointedly didn’t say.</p><p>“Harrow,” said Gideon, her expression a mix of surprise and something else. “You actually came.”</p><p>“Yep,” said Harrow, still standing awkwardly by the door. There was a beat of silence, everyone looking from one to the other with voyeuristic fascination, then Gideon grinned, throwing her arms expansively out in welcome and dispelling with ease the weird tension between them that was apparently of deep and profound interest to everybody else in the room. “Hey, get yourself a drink, sit down!”</p><p>Harrow approached the table cautiously, bypassing Ianthe who was patting the empty floor next to her with a fervour that bordered on demented, sitting instead in the narrow space between the corner of the table and the bed that presumably nobody else was quite small-boned enough to fill. Protesilaus handed her a beer – with a murmured “Carbohydrates are one of three macronutrients, along with fat and protein,” which she dutifully ignored – and she took a sip, grimacing at the taste. “This is vile,” she said, and Gideon nodded cheerfully.</p><p>“Totally. You stop tasting it after a while though. Perseverance is the key.”</p><p>Harrow doubted it, but sipped again anyway. Her eye kept returning to a large, busy canvas hanging on the opposite wall, and she leaned in closer to better make out the details. It was, she realised, a painting of women: at once kaleidoscopic, adulatory and triumphant. She vaguely recognised most of its subjects, although not quite well enough to name. Bond girls from the 1960s, scream queens from the 1970s, monochrome sex symbols from the last century – all looked out from the canvas with sober and imperious eyes, ruby lips parted as though on the verge of speech. There were images from magazines, too, famous fashion photographs that even Harrow had seen, imprecisely torn and rearranged to form slapdash collages of the same women they’d originally portrayed, bodies broken down and joined back together with thin strokes of gold paint like Japanese <em>kintsugi</em>. The effect should have been childish, or perhaps discordant, but it was mesmerising; lines of ink and paint flowed together in a clash of art styles – photorealistic, expressionist, pop art – that caught the viewer’s attention and then smugly, obstinately, refused to relinquish it.</p><p>“Do you like it?” said Gideon.</p><p>“What?” said Harrow vaguely, her attention snagged by a tongue-in-cheek caricaturish sketch almost hidden away in the bottom-right corner of the canvas; Uma Thurman in a three-piece suit standing imperiously over brick-shithouse <em>Pulp Fiction</em> John Travolta, his bulgingly rectangular body squeezed into a slinky evening dress. </p><p>“The picture,” said Gideon. She took a long pull from her beer, her heavy-lidded eyes remaining on Harrow as she tipped her head back to swallow. “Do you like it?” There was a glimmer of alert curiosity in her gaze.</p><p>With a start, Harrow realised that the art was Gideon’s own. “Yes,” she said, surprised by her own answer, but it was true; Harrow didn’t have an artistic bone in her body, and, although she would sooner gnaw off her own foot than say it in so many words, Gideon’s talent was undeniable.</p><p>Despite the simplicity of the answer she’d been given, Gideon smiled, languorous and self-satisfied. “The Harrowhark Nonagesimus seal of approval,” she said, leaning over to clink the base of her bottle against Harrow’s in a half-assed toast to her own perceived achievement. “Nice.”</p><p>“It’s – fascinating,” Harrow said shortly. “I didn’t know you did… stuff like this.”</p><p>Gideon snorted. “Let’s be real, Harrow, if I’d put a gun to your head ten minutes ago and asked you what exactly I was getting a degree in, you’d be all dead and bullet-y right about now.”</p><p>Harrow frowned. “That’s not true.”</p><p>Gideon looked at her and said nothing, her sardonic expression fading slowly into a strange, impassive scrutiny that Harrow didn’t understand. Feeling discomfited, she dropped her gaze, resisting the urge to fiddle with the damp label on the beer bottle still clasped in her hand.</p><p>“Isaac, what have you got?” The sharp voice of someone sitting across the table suddenly cut through the tension: squinting through a cloud of Ianthe’s cigarette smoke, Harrow dimly recognised the speaker as one of the terrible first-years whose existence frequently made her day a little worse every time she found herself assailed by their mind-numbingly banal standing-directly-in-the-middle-of-the-only-path-for-no-apparent-reason chatter.</p><p>“A knife!” said her equally teenaged friend, his expression eager. He looked like a woodland creature in a Disney film, Harrow thought. Loathsomely bright-eyed and heinously bushy-tailed.</p><p>“No!” snapped the girl, and she lunged across the table to snatch it out of his grasp. “Put – that – <em>down</em>,” she said, effectively wrestling Isaac into submission with a set of precise elbow jabs to the sternum, leaving him curled on the floor in a prostrate heap and interrupting his whined “But <em>Jeannemary</em> –” with an unsympathetically hissed “Your parents told me to keep an eye on you while we’re here, and that means no combining sharp objects with alcohol, unless you want to spend the next four hours in A&amp;E again waiting to reattach the tip of your thumb.”</p><p>“Yes, Jeannemary,” Isaac said sullenly, pulling himself back up to a sitting position.</p><p>Harrow shot a sideways glance at Gideon, bemused by the peculiar exchange. “Kids,” said Gideon fondly and indulgently. “How fast they grow.”</p><p>Jeannemary and Isaac kept muttering dark little nothings in each other’s direction, glaring narrow-eyed across the table, until Gideon slung her arm around Isaac with an easy “C’mon, kids, don’t make me put you in the pear wiggler.”</p><p>“The <em>what,</em>” said Harrow.</p><p>“The pear wiggler!” said Gideon triumphantly, ruffling Isaac’s faded faux-hawk with one hand until he scowled and wriggled out of her grasp. “Bad and naughty children get put in the pear wiggler, to atone for their crimes.”</p><p>“What the fuck are you ever talking about,” said Harrow.</p><p>“You know what, don’t worry about it – ooh, <em>presents?</em>” Eagle-eyed, Gideon’s gaze had zeroed in on the package Harrow had placed down at her side when she sat down and then immediately forgotten about.</p><p>“Oh, um. Yeah,” said Harrow, uncomfortable again, her fingers unconsciously drifting towards the object as if to shield it from view.</p><p>“Like, for me, or is it just for you to… hold onto?” said Gideon, looking at Harrow encouragingly as though she was a particularly dense toddler.</p><p>“No, it’s for you,” Harrow said reluctantly. She passed Gideon the gift, wondering if it would be weird if she just got up and left right now.</p><p>“Cool,” said Gideon, her eyes lighting up as she fiddled with the wrapping paper, shifting in place like an overexcited puppy.</p><p>“You don’t even know what it is yet,” said Harrow. “Maybe it sucks. Maybe I got you, like, an awful thing.”</p><p>“No, but, <em>presents,</em>” said Gideon. “All presents are good. <em>Aha!</em>” With a triumphant noise, she peeled away the wrapping paper, fingers questing for whatever lay underneath. Harrow found herself ardently wishing there weren’t like fifteen other people crowded into the room with them.</p><p>“Harrow…” said Gideon, and then she trailed off, her amber eyes wide and fixated on the object she placed gently, reverently down onto the table.</p><p>It was a small figurine, maybe three inches tall, of a woman standing on a stout pedestal wearing black leather armour. She wore paint on her face in the form of a skull, and in her hands was a giant sword, longer than the warrior’s entire body. She looked tall and strong, with muscular shoulders and a wide stance, and atop her head was a fierce mop of bright red hair.</p><p>“I saw it in one of the weird vintage shops off campus,” Harrow said uncertainly, her gaze on Gideon’s face. “I thought – I just thought she looked like you. It’s probably dumb, but…”</p><p>“No,” Gideon said, looking up and meeting Harrow’s eyes. “It’s fantastic. She’s great.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Harrow, feeling suddenly all warm and gross inside. “Well, good. I’m glad you like it.” If she was the type of person who blushed, she’d perhaps worry about her feelings showing on her face, but Harrowhark Nonagesimus had never blushed in her life and she certainly wasn’t about to start now.</p><p>“I love it,” said Gideon with unexpected sincerity. “Thank you.”</p><p>“Okay, enough of the gay shit, it’s time for our present,” said Ianthe. Her tone was light but her expression oddly pinched when Harrow caught a glimpse of it, in the brief second before Ianthe turned away to rummage through the plastic bag at her side. “Gideon, wait till you see what me and Corona found, you’ll just absolutely <em>die</em>.”</p><p>She handed Gideon a long slim cardboard box. Gideon tore into it curiously, her hands faltering when she saw what was inside.</p><p>“You guys got me a Barbie?” Gideon raised a questioning eyebrow. “I mean, I’m not gonna say it’s <em>not</em> my aesthetic, but…”</p><p>“No, dipshit,” said Ianthe, eternally impatient. “Read the instructions on the box.”</p><p>“Instructions?” Palamedes, who’d previously been sitting quietly to the side, nursing a glass of red wine of dubious provenance, suddenly leaned forwards, his engines undoubtedly revved by the concept of rules and regulations. Together, he and Gideon examined the box, wearing twin expressions of cautious intrigue.</p><p>“No <em>way,</em>” Gideon breathed eventually in a tone of dawning comprehension.</p><p>“Surely not,” said Palamedes. He pushed his glasses further up his nose, head cocked to the side, and squinted at the plastic doll in Gideon’s hands, her face rapt as she beheld it.</p><p>“Okay, so we do <em>this</em> –” Gideon bent the doll forwards at the waist, straightening its arms out in front of it to keep it propped up on the table and spreading its legs obscenely wide.</p><p>“Uh,” said Harrow. “This is getting weird.”</p><p>“Nope,” said Ianthe, her thin voice sounding unusually lively and animated. “But it’s definitely about to.”</p><p>“Does anyone have a lighter?” asked Gideon. Whether it was the singularly ominous nature of the question itself, or the particular set of Gideon’s mouth when she asked it – one corner crooked in the way that spelled <em>mischief</em> with a capital <em>M</em> and a capital <em>FUCK</em> – Harrow felt a definite sense of dread coiling in the pit of her stomach.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Isaac, pulling a cheap BIC lighter from his pocket and shrugging off Jeannemary’s scandalised gasp with a muttered “You know you don’t need to make it <em>quite</em> so obvious you were named after two virgins.”</p><p>“Excellent,” said Gideon gleefully. “Alright, everyone – mind your eyebrows.”</p><p>Cryptic warning duly given, she leaned in, her gaze trained intently on the pornographically posed doll, then clicked the lighter on and held the flame up to its exposed nether regions.</p><p>“What the fuck,” said Harrow and about five other people.</p><p>For a long, interminable second, nothing happened, and then suddenly <em>everything</em> happened. The doll’s crotch caught fire and with a loud hissing noise and a blaze of eye-searingly bright sparks it shot out a bolt of pure flame that extended out from its rear for a distance of, by Harrow’s estimation, approximately twelve inches. What followed was an uproar that Ortus would surely be complaining about for at least the next calendar year: with a shocked “Holy shit!” Gideon scrambled backwards, landing more or less in Palamedes’ lap, whose normally placid face was somehow exhibiting every human emotion at once; Ianthe’s shoulders heaved with uncontrollable mirth; the awful teens were squawking incoherently, clambering over one another in fits of rapturous astonishment. All of that happened at once, and then, chasing the heels of that one cinematic, indescribable moment, Gideon’s curtains went dramatically up in flames.</p><p>-</p><p>“Those are absolutely supposed to be fireproof,” said Harrow in a daze. “It says so in the university regulations.”</p><p>They were milling about outside the Ninth, fire alarm still blaring, although the fire itself had been put out promptly by a quick-thinking Palamedes.</p><p>“Holy shit,” said Gideon, who’d said little else since they’d all evacuated her still-smoking bedroom. “Holy fucking shit.”</p><p>“God, you’re <em>so</em> welcome,” said Ianthe, wearing an expression of extreme, blissful self-satisfaction. “That was just –”</p><p><em>“Spectacular,”</em> said Gideon, awed.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Ianthe contentedly. “Yeah.”</p><p>They all lapsed into silence, leaning together against the wall of the Ninth, looking out into the night with reverence and wonder. Then, Ianthe sighed, pushing herself away from the wall, and said, “Alright, well, I’m off. Pretty sure that was the high point of this, and every, evening.” She shook her head in an attitude of ostentatious disbelief. “Can’t believe I’ve peaked at twenty-two. Oh, well.”</p><p>And then she was gone. At some point everyone else had left too, this simple fact escaping Harrow’s notice until she looked around her and saw no one there but Gideon, still gazing off into space with eyes that gleamed in the moonlight. Harrow felt strange, ungainly and offkey; standing outside the halls at night she couldn’t help but remember the last time she’d been there with Gideon, the bitter words they’d flung at each other, the tensions that still lingered unresolved. Clearly, it wasn’t far from Gideon’s mind either, because after a while her expression shifted, and she looked suddenly at Harrow with something resembling consternation. “Ah, fuck,” she said succinctly. “Harrow, I’m really sorry if this gets you in trouble. I can lie and say you weren’t there, you know, if it helps.”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it,” replied Harrow, tilting her head back to stare up at the beautiful and indifferent stars, surprised by how much she meant it when she said, “It was worth it. It was really, really worth it.” And then, entirely despite herself, she gave into the tremor running up her spine. With her body pressed up against the wall beside the person who’d been the source of her most ardent frustrations for the past three long years, Harrowhark Nonagesimus laughed, and laughed, and laughed.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>And then life more or less went back to normal, although something of that night’s peculiar magic left a faint but indelible imprint on Harrow’s psyche. The next morning, she’d woken up to find that she’d been added to Gideon’s group chat.  </p><p><em>jeannemary_chatur:</em> I’m just saying I think it was kind of problematic :/// barbie dolls are super gross anyway even when they don’t have, like, immolated baginas</p><p><em>jeannemary_chatur:</em> *VAGINAS</p><p><em>isaac_tettares:</em> hhahahaha baginas</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>Isaac Tettares changed the name of the group chat to ‘baginas!!!’</em>
  </strong>
</p><p><em>gideon_nav:</em> i am going to drive my truck into your front room</p><p><em>isaac_tettares:</em> you dont have a truck</p><p><em>gideon_nav:</em> i could have a truck</p><p><em>isaac_tettares:</em> owo,,,, ;n;</p><p><em>palamedes_sextus:</em> Thy truck runneth over, Gideon 23:5</p><p><em>camilla_hect:</em> lmao</p><p><em>jeannemary_chatur:</em> anyway I just think Ianthe should maybe like???? apologise????</p><p><em>ianthe_tridentarius:</em> hm</p><p><em>ianthe_tridentarius:</em> no &lt;3</p><p>The buzz of near-constant conversation proved to be an odd source of comfort: Harrow never joined in, but just knowing it was there – that she’d been included despite herself, no longer left to stand so pridefully alone on the sidelines – made the silent loneliness of her studious evenings pass a little easier, somehow.</p><p>-</p><p>A week or so after the party, she was sitting at the table of the Ninth’s shared kitchen, poking her fork dispassionately through her reheated microwaveable noodles, when Gideon walked in with a bag of groceries. “Snap,” she said by way of greeting, pulling her own packet of instant ramen out of the bag. Then, with a quirked, ironic eyebrow: “Man, we really do play fast and loose with the possibility of malnutrition, huh?”</p><p>“Eh,” said Harrow, shrugging dispassionately. “If I die, I die.”</p><p>“That’s the spirit,” said Gideon cheerfully.</p><p>They both went quiet as Harrow mechanically worked her way through her bowl of heinous sustenance and Gideon put away her shopping, pulling a red Sharpie out of her pocket and writing her name with a flourish and a death threat on any item that seemed likely to go missing in her absence. After a couple of minutes of unusually companionable silence, Gideon paused and turned to Harrow, her brow lightly furrowed, and said, “Hey, when’s your birthday?”</p><p>“Oh,” said Harrow, surprised by the question. “It’s passed already,” she continued vaguely, not looking up from her bleak noodle meal. “It’s in January.”</p><p>“Huh,” said Gideon, the line between her eyebrows deepening as it always did when she was dissatisfied with something. “Well, now I feel bad. You got me a present for mine and everything.”</p><p>“Don’t feel bad,” said Harrow, entirely without emotion. “I don’t do birthdays.”</p><p>Gideon pulled out the chair opposite Harrow’s and threw herself down in it with all the grace of a dropped sack of potatoes, her eyes keenly fixed on Harrow. “You don’t ‘do’ them? What, did the Grinch swing by and take them too while he was off stealing Christmas? Like a two-for-one deal kind of thing?”</p><p>Harrow shrugged one bony shoulder, uneasy. “No, I just don’t celebrate my birthdays. Haven’t done since I was fifteen.”</p><p>“Wow,” said Gideon, deadpan. “Your life is just the saddest thing. It’s worse than, like, the awful donkeys in the charity adverts; you know, with the big woeful eyes and the –”</p><p>“Yes, I am aware, thank you,” said Harrow, hackles up at the thought of being pitied, but there wasn’t any pity in Gideon’s expression; rather, she was looking at Harrow contemplatively, like Harrow was a particularly thorny puzzle she had an inexplicably keen interest in solving. The intent in her gaze made Harrow’s skin prickle uncomfortably.</p><p>“What about your parents? Your family? Are they on board with this total moratorium on celebratory events, or…” Gideon trailed off, undoubtedly responding to the sudden shuttering of Harrow’s face, a window slamming shut. “Hey,” she continued, changing tack with an unanticipated sensitivity. “You don’t have to answer that actually, I’m just being nosy. We can talk about something that’s not your totally weird birthday embargo, if you want.”</p><p>Harrow nodded once, stiffly, and Gideon grinned, leaning backwards in her chair until it threatened to topple backwards, dumping her ass without fanfare onto the grungy linoleum. “See, that’s definitely my least useful skill,” she said, casually diverting the conversation. “I’m the best at making things weird. I just show up in situations like, ‘Hey, it’s going to get weird, I’m gonna make this weird,’ and then I do. It’s unfortunate, really – d’you remember the time last year with Judith Deuteros and the pumpkin and the <em>duck</em>…” She launched into the well-worn anecdote, not seeming to need any input from Harrow save for the occasional wordless noise of acknowledgement, until Harrow’s posture was a little less rigid, her fists a little looser.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Term ended three days later, prompting a mass exodus of students who were leaving halls for the next two weeks in order to go home and return to the much-missed comfort of having someone else do their laundry for them. Harrow dealt with this reminder that other people had functioning home lives by barely emerging from her bedroom at all on the last day of term; the one time she ventured out for food she narrowly avoided an encounter with Ortus’ terrible and exhausting mother, which only reaffirmed her decision to stay as far out of the way as possible. By the end of the weekend, the Ninth was almost empty save for a couple of exceptions, which included Harrow, and, somewhat unexpectedly, Gideon.</p><p>Even more unexpected was the fact that Gideon started accompanying her around campus more often than not, trailing her from the Ninth to the library and back again, half-assing one-armed push-ups on the floor of Harrow’s bedroom while Harrow tried to work, keeping her company in the kitchen whenever Harrow’s body clamoured its need for more despicable student food. The whole time she kept up an almost entirely one-sided conversation, peppering her chatter with questions about Harrow, seemingly undeterred when they went unanswered, as, more often than not, they did. Harrow’s work rate took a significant hit – for the entire first week of the break she wrote less than she usually would in a single day – but she found that, for some reason, she didn’t particularly mind. Her stress levels peaked again at night, when she lay alone in her bed with only her thoughts for company, but when Gideon was there the noise and the pressure quietly retreated, becoming a low buzz in the back of her brain that was easy enough to suppress, with a little effort. “Good,” Gideon said nonchalantly whenever Harrow alluded to this in some intentionally oblique way. “You definitely work way too much. Live a little, Nonagesimus.”</p><p>Of course, it was all bound to come to a head eventually, but when it finally did, Harrow realised – despite its clear, glaring inevitability, making her feel foolish with how exceedingly obvious it was in hindsight – that she hadn’t actually been expecting it at all.</p><p>-</p><p>“…So I dropped out of my A-levels, because, you know, dyslexia’s a bitch, then I had to do an art foundation course at the local college, which took me ages because I was bartending to support myself the whole time, and <em>then</em> I did the whole UCAS thing to come here,” Gideon was saying. She was sprawled out artlessly on Harrow’s bedroom floor, leaning back on her elbows, her long legs – encased in worn, ragged skinny jeans that looked about half a second away from giving up the ghost completely – stretched out in front of her, bare feet crossed at the ankles.</p><p>“That’s… a lot,” Harrow said. “I mean, I basically knew I was coming here before I was even old enough to apply.” She remembered suddenly what Gideon had said about Lord Fauntleroy’s Sixth Form College or whatever and frowned slightly, tilting her head down so that her chin-length dark fringe hid her expression.</p><p>“Yeah, well,” Gideon said. Her tone was easy-going enough but she’d grown tense, Harrow could tell; her feet, which had been tapping out an absent-minded rhythm against the foot of Harrow’s bed, had stilled. “Circumstances. You know.”</p><p>Harrow chewed on her lower lip, pensive, then carefully brushed her hair out of her face with the back of one hand. “You don’t have to tell me this stuff, you know,” she said eventually, semi-consciously echoing Gideon’s sentiment from the last similarly fraught conversation they’d had.</p><p>“Nah, it’s fine, as long as you’re cool with me starting from the beginning,” said Gideon, rolling her head back on her shoulders and arching her back until her spine audibly popped. Harrow glanced away, strangely abashed. With a satisfied sigh, Gideon flopped back down to the carpet, her posture slumping back to its atrocious norm. “Ugh, so, basically,” she began, staring up at Harrow’s ceiling. “I never actually knew my dad, he left before I was born, so my mum had me all on her own, and, well, she died. When I was just a baby.”</p><p>Harrow flinched. Gideon, her eyes still trained on the ceiling, didn’t notice. “I mean, it’s fine. Or – it’s not fine, but I don’t remember her at all, which I guess is easier? But either way, she didn’t have any close family, so I went into the system.”</p><p>“I – I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” said Harrow idiotically, perturbed.</p><p>“No, I mean, how would you?” Gideon sighed, drawing one long leg up until her foot rested flat against the carpet. “Anyway, it was whatever. Not the best upbringing, but I wasn’t, like, <em>abused</em> or anything. But there are a lot of kids in the system, and the older you get the less likely it is you’ll get fostered or adopted out, and I guess no one wanted the mixed-race loudmouth ginger kid, so I stayed there until I was old enough to live on my own, and then I worked my ass off to make something of myself.” She grinned up at Harrow, sudden and blinding, as unexpected and cataclysmic as an asteroid hitting earth. “I mean, I still don’t know <em>what</em> exactly I’m making of myself, as you’ve pointed out more than a handful of times. I just wanted to be more than what everyone expected of me.”</p><p>“Shit,” said Harrow, guilt bubbling up in the pit of her stomach. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Gideon shrugged, an easy, loose-limbed gesture. “Don’t worry about it, Nonagesimus. We’re cool. And anyway, we’re not even at the wildest part of the story yet, so.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Harrow said again. “Keep going, then.”</p><p>“Alright, so I came here – and you know there’s the Dean’s speech to all the first years at the start of term?” She glanced up at Harrow for acknowledgement; Harrow nodded. “So like, he comes out in the auditorium, and he starts talking to us about academic achievement or fucking whatever, and I’m not listening to a single word he’s saying because <em>this dude has my fucking eyes</em> just, right there in his face! And I’m not trying to be conceited or anything – haha, just kidding, I totally am – but like…” – here she gestured upwards at her own face – “…these babies are pretty damn recognisable, you know?”</p><p>Harrow nodded again. She did, unfortunately, know.</p><p>“Like, I didn’t have to be a 23andMe ass bitch to figure out there was something up with that, right? So I knew I had to talk to him – which, by the way, did you know it’s like fucking impossible to get a meeting with the Dean? Dude thinks he’s goddamn James Bond, I swear – but I eventually got in to see him. And I had this whole plan of what to say to him, but it all just went completely out of the window, because the second he saw me my guy just went <em>white.</em> As the proverbial grave.”</p><p>“Uh,” said Harrow. “I’m not actually sure that’s the saying –”</p><p>“But <em>anyway,</em>” Gideon said, giving Harrow an unimpressed look and barrelling ahead. “I’d felt like this total fucking nerd, like, Victorian orphan, wandering into his office like <em>Oy mista! You me dad?</em> and then he just recognised me right away, on sight. Just absolutely unreal. Even the idea of it, how hard I worked to get my ass into this university, everyone acting like I’d never be good enough, and then my dad’s the fucking <em>Dean.</em>” She broke off, shaking her head in residual disbelief. “And then I was just – just furious, like, incandescently angry, because… God, this is going to sound so deeply uncool, but when I was a kid I used to fantasise, you know, just stupid kid shit, like, ‘One day my dad’s gonna come and rescue me from the children’s home, and he’ll be some major important rich dude, and everything in my whole life will be fixed.’ And when I got older I realised that that probably wasn’t gonna happen, but I could at least comfort myself with the thought that maybe he didn’t ever know about me. All I knew about him was that he wasn’t around by the time my mum gave birth, so I guess I just convinced myself she never told him she was pregnant, or something, you know? That I was gonna track him down one day and we’d have this big reunion, and then I’d – then I’d finally <em>have</em> someone. Someone all for me.” She laughed angrily, her eyes fierce and glittering. “Stupid. So fucking stupid.”</p><p>“It’s not stupid,” Harrow said quietly. Her words felt cowardly, insufficient, but they were all she had, so she said them anyway. “It wasn’t stupid, Gideon.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, it doesn’t actually matter,” said Gideon. “Because it obviously didn’t happen like that. He pretty much just shat himself as soon as I walked in, and we had this ridiculously uncomfortable conversation that lasted all of five minutes, him trying to get me out of his office the whole time, and then I left, and that was it. Turned out he knew about me the whole time and just didn’t give a tiny rat’s shit, so I figure why should I care about him either, right?” She smiled, and it had the vicious edge of a freshly sharpened sword. “And I have people, now, anyway. I made my own family, and I reckon it’s probably better than most people’s families, because I chose mine out of people I actually liked, so. It’s only a sob story if I choose to tell it that way, you know?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Harrow distantly. Something about that – what Gideon had said, or maybe just how she’d said it – it had reached down her throat and stuck in her chest, radiating jagged lines of hurt outwards like an unstanched wound, and Harrow wasn’t even sure why. Gideon tipped her head to the side, looking up at the sunset blazing out streaks of deep violet and orange like enormous celestial fingers outside of Harrow’s bedroom window, and Harrow, unchecked, looked at Gideon.</p><p>“You wanna know the worst part, though?” Gideon said eventually, rolling over onto her front and meeting Harrow’s eyes, one calloused hand propped underneath her chin. “So, a couple of months later I’m talking to Pyrrha, you know, the uni guidance counsellor, and she’s all like ‘Oh, that’s such a cool name, so unusual for a girl,’ and I’m like ‘Yeah, I get that a lot,’ and she tells me it’s funny because that’s the name of the Dean’s <em>pet</em> that he’s had for like, ten thousand years. I asked her about it and it turns out he has this absolutely decrepit old lizard called Gideon and he’s like, basically in love with it or whatever.”</p><p>“You’re kidding,” said Harrow.</p><p>“Nope,” said Gideon. “I’m literally named after a fucking <em>gecko</em>. And not only that, but to my dad, the gecko is the <em>superior</em> Gideon.”</p><p>Harrow bit her lip, not sure how she was supposed to react, then caved and said: “Okay, I’m sorry, but that part is kind of funny.”</p><p>“Dude, it’s fucking hilarious.” Gideon shook her head again, a lock of red hair tumbling down over her face. She tucked it messily behind her ear and grinned. “I mean, this shit could only happen to me, right? It would be such a great story to tell at parties, but people always get hung up on the trauma part.”</p><p>“I really don’t know how you do that,” said Harrow abruptly.</p><p>“Do what?” said Gideon, flopping back over onto her back and looking at Harrow upside down.</p><p>Harrow shrugged uneasily. “Just, make such a joke of it all.”</p><p>“Well, it’s like I said, it’s only a sob story if I tell it like that, and I don’t wanna do that, so I don’t. I’m not saying it didn’t massively blow at the time, but like… Life goes on, you know? I don’t wanna be defined by the bad shit that’s happened to me, so I figured out how to deal with it before it could suck all the joy out of everything else too.”</p><p>“Oh,” Harrow managed. “Yeah. I suppose.”</p><p>“I refuse to be a victim,” Gideon continued, her voice low and her expression fixed and stubborn. “I don’t ever want people to see me that way.”</p><p>“Like how they see me?” The words were out before Harrow could even make an attempt to contain them, sitting heavily in the air between her and Gideon. She pulled her knees close to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, her heart beating raggedly in her chest like a tiny bird beating its wings fretfully against the bars of its cage.</p><p>“Huh? What?” Gideon frowned and sat up, looking quizzically up at Harrow. “Okay, you’ve lost me. Why would they?”</p><p>“I – no. It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”</p><p>“Dude…” Gideon lapsed into a distracted silence, her brow furrowed and her mouth half-open as she attempted to corral her thoughts, formulating them into words. “Alright, so I get the distinct impression you’ve got some damage you’re working through, and that’s fine, and – yeah – maybe people pick up on that? But, I mean… to be perfectly honest, I don’t think anyone actually knows enough about you to see you as a victim of anything.”</p><p>“Good,” Harrow said.</p><p>“Good?” Gideon’s eyebrows rose sceptically, her own baggage evidently pushed aside for the moment. “I mean, I get it, trust me, but if it bothers you that much – don’t you ever think maybe it would do you some good to like, talk to someone about whatever it is you’re dealing with?”</p><p>Harrow laughed, a flat, disbelieving sound, and shook her head. “No.”</p><p>“Letting people in isn’t always a bad thing, Harrow.”</p><p>“Sure,” said Harrow. “Whatever. I don’t want to do that, though.”</p><p>“Not even me?” The words were casual, but there was a thread of tension running through them, visible in Gideon’s cautious eyes, the particular set of her mouth. “I mean, I just told you about the worst thing that ever happened to me, I’m sitting in a pretty vulnerable space right now. Not like I’m gonna judge you, or anything.”</p><p>Harrow felt trapped, uncomfortable, a butterfly writhing on a pin. She averted her eyes, picking at her nails. “I just don’t like talking about myself,” she said finally.</p><p>“No, I get that,” said Gideon. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me your life story in return for mine; you don’t have to tell me anything at all, actually. It’s just…” She trailed off, her eyebrows dipping in consternation. “Fuck, I’m really bad at expressing myself. I feel like I’m trying to have two conversations at once here.” She closed her eyes for a second, her frown smoothing itself out, then started again. “Okay. This probably feels like kind of a weird swerve, but I guess I felt that maybe this was… something?” She broke off, gesturing at the empty space between herself and Harrow. “Or that perhaps it could be? And I just – I suppose I just want to know if I’m just beating my head against a brick wall here, or what. Because sometimes it feels like you want to know me, which is promising, but then I try to ask you a question about, I dunno, what <em>breakfast cereals</em> you like or something totally fucking dumb and you just stonewall me completely, you know?”</p><p>The moment stretched out between them, Harrow frozen immobile on her bed with Gideon sitting cross-legged at her feet, uncomfortable silence progressing from taut to unbearable until finally Gideon let out a small laugh and bowed her head. “Okay, I mean… I guess that answers my question.”</p><p>“Gideon,” Harrow began, her voice unsteady.</p><p>“No, it’s cool.” Gideon’s face was unreadable, her eyes downcast. “I mean, I totally just sprung that on you out of nowhere, so… Not gonna lie, this isn’t really the outcome I was hoping for, but it’s not like I’m surprised either, you know? I don’t think I ever genuinely believed –”</p><p>“No, it’s just – I hadn’t thought…” Harrow broke off, running a hand through her short hair as she sought for the right words, but even as she said them she knew they were uselessly, hopelessly insufficient. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”</p><p>Gideon laughed again, and it was awful. “Yeah, see, this happens a lot, though, doesn’t it? I keep finding out that all these things about me and you – all the things I spend hours agonising over – they’re things you don’t even think about at all.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” said Harrow instantly, the void in her chest a gaping chasm that threatened to swallow her entirely, swallow everything, leaving nothing in its wake.</p><p>Gideon shook her head, adamant. “No, you – you haven’t done anything wrong, it’s me, I’m just dumb about you.” Her lips twisted into a wry smile as she glanced up at Harrow. “Totally fucking dumb. Who knows why. But the thing is – I just can’t keep doing this to myself, you know? At some point, I just have to say, like, <em>enough</em>.”</p><p>They were quiet again. Then, slowly, painfully, Gideon pushed herself up to her feet, until she was standing above Harrow, looking down at her instead of the other way around. “Alright, listen, I think I’m going to go? I’m not mad at you or anything, it’s just… I’m totally embarrassed, and I didn’t actually plan to tell you about that, and I’m realising that this probably isn’t a healthy situation for me to be in, and – yeah, I pretty much just have to go and die in a hole right now.”</p><p>“I understand,” said Harrow, poleaxed, thinking <em>How did this happen?</em> Her lips felt numb; the words she spoke seemed alien, dissociated from her like a traumatically severed limb the moment they dropped from her mouth. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“You keep saying that,” said Gideon softly. “But you don’t really have anything to be sorry for.”</p><p>And then she left, closing the door decisively behind her, and Harrowhark was alone again.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Solitude pressed itself back down on Harrow, no longer a weighted blanket but a funeral shroud, enveloping her in the dead and rotten silence of the grave.</p><p>She slept, eventually, but for once she didn’t dream, and that scared her so badly she stayed awake for the whole of the next two nights. She’d become so accustomed to the spectres of her parents haunting her in her sleep – at times the luminous, unmarred white of martyrs and saints, at others decayed and fleshless as a child’s nightmare – that their sudden absence hollowed her out entirely, draining her of blood and life and feeling until she was just as withered as she pictured them to be, as they surely were, by now, resting for all eternity in their wooden coffins six feet below ground. Before, she could handle the loneliness, no matter how bad it got, because when she finally closed her eyes they were always there for her, reaching for her with cold and bloodless fingers; now there was nothing, and no one, and for the first time Harrow felt the real and true weight of the isolated fortress she’d built for herself, brick by brick, over years and years and years. She was entirely separate from the world: her pain was hers and hers alone, and nothing and no one would hurt with her.</p><p>In the small hours, she paced her room from end to end into the small hours, forcing her eyes open when lack of sleep made them heavy, keeping her mind purposefully blank, staring out into the empty dark like a blood-sniffing shark. When morning came, she pulled her curtains shut so as to block out the intrusion of daylight and lay down in bed, flat on her back with her arms straight at her sides; she allowed her eyes to close then but lay awake regardless, petrified, wholly unable to move. Alone, she waited desperately for something to reach out its hands to her and pull her firmly out of the abyss she was tumbling down, a deep, dark blackness without end or hope or sanctuary.</p><p>When she rose at last from bed, she sat at her desk with books spread out in front of her, squinting through a haze of exhaustion at the words swimming on the page and making herself copy out the parts she’d underlined previously. Her slanted spiky handwriting was almost unreadable when she read it back afterwards. <em>‘Don't little children, awakened one morning and told, "Now you're five!" – don't they wail at the universe's descent into chaos? The sun slowly dying, the spiral arm spreading, the molecules drifting apart second by second toward our inevitable heat death – shouldn't we all wail to the stars?’</em> When she’d finished, she pressed her hands to her face, pushing her knuckles against her closed eyelids until the darkness erupted into a myriad of colours in violent firework shades that made her think of auburn hair, golden eyes smiling, a curved and wicked pink-lipped mouth; the sun outside had somehow made its way across a wide expanse of empty sky when she took her hands away ten seconds later. She bent back over her work. <em>‘That life – whatever else it is – is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open.’</em> She closed her eyes, breathed in, pictured her lungs expanding all messy and pink and glistening, breathed out, opened her eyes. <em>Nature (meaning Death) always wins.</em> She drew an unsteady, swooping circle around those five words, accidentally scoring a deep line through part of the next sentence, the part that read: <em>immerse ourselves anyway</em>.</p><p>At some point, term had started back up again. Harrow wouldn’t have noticed, but for the low and constant hum of people living their loud and incomprehensible lives beyond the narrow boundaries of her room. She didn’t go to lectures, missed scheduled meetings with Mercymorn, barely ate, barely rested. After a while, she stopped trying to work at all. She’d turned her phone off at some point in the haze, or maybe the battery had died; eventually, she forgot where it even was. She lay on her bed for hours on end, staring up at the ceiling, remembering without wanting to how Gideon had lain on the floor and stared up at this ceiling too, wondered if there was something poetic in that. Decided, eventually, there wasn’t.</p><p>And then she started seeing things: people, shapes, bright sparks of unexpected colour; things she was quite sure weren’t there but that appeared to her nonetheless, accompanied often by the harsh sound of scornful whispers and low, disdainful laughter, muffled as though coming from somewhere else, somewhere far away. These visions rose in intensity until she couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t stay in that room for a single second longer, shoved her way out of it like breaking her way out of a coffin and half-tripped, half-stumbled down the stairs on ungainly legs, tipping out of the front door and landing hard on her knees on the gravel outside. She gasped and shook uncontrollably, reaching out desperately in front of her, grasping fistfuls of grass and earth and soil and holding on tight until the world stopped spinning and tilting on its wildly uncertain axis. Then, at last, she pushed herself upright, and began to walk aimlessly down the path, breathing in great lungfuls of the cold late-night air, expelling it again in visible clouds that proved she was alive, she lived, she lived.</p><p>Almost without meaning to, she ended up outside the library. She pushed the door open, pausing for a long trancelike moment to run her fingers over her dead mother’s name on the entrance plaque, then entered as if in a dream, almost convinced that it was the ground itself that was moving and that she was only walking forward in order to keep up with it. Like a puppet with its strings cut, she collapsed down at a table in the corner, dropped her head down onto her outstretched arms, and gave herself up to whatever would have her, let her soul lift away from her body to maybe find some solace in the solid oak bookshelves, the muted warm light that shone constant and unerring from the ceiling above her.</p><p>There, at long last, sleep came for Harrowhark Nonagesimus.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>When she woke, it must still have been night, because the library was quiet and empty, the lights still dimmed. For a while she didn’t move, her limbs dead and cold, but when she finally stirred she felt the weight of something she hadn’t consciously registered fall suddenly away from her shoulders. She turned, startled. There was a woollen blanket on the floor behind her, and she gazed at it for a long moment, uncomprehending, before glancing up and meeting the eye of the reticent librarian, sitting beside a stack of papers a few tables away and clearly pretending not to be keeping a watchful eye on her in between tasks.</p><p>He was a stout man, not especially tall or imposing, with a warm and kindly face semi-concealed by a pair of reading glasses, slightly askew. Harrow knew him by sight but not by name; he typically manned the desk by the entrance, but now, thinking back on it, she wasn’t sure they’d ever actually exchanged words. His ordinarily cheerful features were pulled tight with concern as he looked at her, and the worry sat strangely on his homely face – it was like he hadn’t been designed with that expression in mind, Harrow thought, and she felt a weird stab of guilt for being the one to put it there. “I’m sorry,” she croaked without knowing truly what it was she was apologising for. Her voice was startlingly hoarse from days of disuse. Reflexively, she licked her lips; they were dry and chapped, almost painfully so.</p><p>“Sorry?” The man’s eyebrows dipped even further. “Heavens, child, what on earth do you have to be sorry about?”</p><p>Harrow didn’t answer. She was certain she looked awful: she didn’t know how many days had passed since Gideon – it hurt to even think her name – had left her room, but in that time she hadn’t once showered or brushed her teeth, her hair was tangled and knotted, and she knew without checking her reflection that the skin around her eyes was drawn and bruise-coloured from lack of sleep. But despite all of this, there was only sympathy in the librarian’s face; he rose and approached her with the gentle caution of someone trying their utmost not to startle a wild animal, picking the blanket up from the floor and placing it with quiet care down on the table in front of Harrow. Slowly, he pulled out the empty chair beside her, folding his limbs down into it more delicately than his large frame seemed capable of, then affected a cartoonish wince and winked conspiratorially at Harrow.</p><p>“I hate these chairs, they’re absolutely godawful for my back,” he said companionably, his voice low in concession both to the hour and the library rules. “But no, don’t you worry. I’ve been working here for a long time now, and you’re far from the first student to come in here all distraught in the middle of a crisis. I’m Magnus, by the way. Magnus Quinn.” He held out a hand to Harrow and she shook it, polite but bewildered.</p><p>“I’m –” she started to say.</p><p>“Oh, I know who you are,” said Magnus, his friendly eyes twinkling. “You’re Harrowhark. I was rather well-acquainted with your parents, back in the day.”</p><p>“You – knew my parents?” Harrowhark repeated, her mouth suddenly dry. She swallowed; her throat made an audible <em>click</em> in the sanctified hush of the library.</p><p>“Like I said, I’ve been here quite a long time.” Magnus smiled, small and wistful. “You probably don’t remember, they used to bring you in here all the time when you were little, back when they still worked at the university. And, you know – even then, you liked reading the books more than you liked playing. A child after my own heart, I used to think.”</p><p>Harrow sat back, her heart pounding in her chest. “But if… I mean, why didn’t you say anything to me before?”</p><p>Magnus sighed, a regretful exhalation. “Oh, I see you in here all the time, of course, I just…” He inclined his head sorrowfully, as though there was a weight of almost impossible magnitude pressing down on his back and shoulders. “Well, I wasn’t sure if it would be the best idea to approach you, or if I should just leave you be. I was terribly upset when I heard about your parents, but – I suppose it’s been a long time, after all, hasn’t it?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Harrow woodenly, unable to prevent the corners of her mouth quirking downwards. “It has.”</p><p>“Oh dear, listen to me – you come in here all upset, and there I go making it worse.” Magnus’ brow furrowed unhappily, his tone chiding and self-accusatory. “I’m always putting my foot in it. I’m so sorry.”</p><p>“No, it’s alright,” said Harrow. “No one ever talks about them anymore, so. It’s nice.” She gave a tiny shrug, affecting nonchalance, not quite able to meet Magnus’ gaze.</p><p>“Well, in that case, I have plenty of stories about them – maybe some photographs, even, somewhere around here – but perhaps another time?” Magnus hesitated, his eyes bright behind his glasses. “I’m sensing maybe that isn’t quite what you need right now.”</p><p>“No,” said Harrow, and to her horror she found that she was about to cry.</p><p>“Oh, oh dear,” said Magnus fretfully, reaching out a hand as if to pat her on the shoulder and thinking better of it, leaving it hovering awkwardly in the air between them. “Oh, I wish my wife was here – she’s much better at handling this type of thing, you know…”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Harrow choked out, her eyes wet. “I’m sorry, I don’t – I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”</p><p>“Well, I’m sure we all feel that way sometimes,” said Magnus worriedly, the chair creaking beneath him as he adjusted his weight. “I hear sometimes it helps to get it all out, you know – of course, I know I’m basically just a perfect stranger to you and you’re completely welcome to tell me to bog off – but I’m happy to listen, if you need to talk.”</p><p>That, somehow, was all it took for Harrow’s meticulously constructed dam to break, and then the words came spilling out of her mouth, rushing out in a flood too fierce to be contained. “I’m just – it’s that I’m so lonely, and so tired, and this is my last year here and I’m so afraid that if I don’t do well then I’ll have ruined everything, everything my parents wanted for me, and I want them to be proud, and it’s so stupid because they’re not even here to care one way or the other, and – and I don’t even know what I’m going to do afterwards, because I never envisioned that life would just keep going, because – because it didn’t, for them, right, so why should it for me? And…” She broke off to sniff and wipe her eyes, tears dripping pathetically down her small and pointed face. “And I think it’s just beginning to really hit me that they’re gone, and I’ve ruined – I’ve ruined every other relationship I could have had, because I’m so afraid of people thinking I’m weak that I can’t, I can’t be vulnerable or open like they can, and if it’s so easy for everyone else then why is it so hard for me?”</p><p>“Oh, sweetheart. It just isn’t fair, sometimes, is it?” Magnus’ voice was so quietly, achingly kind that a fresh wave of sobs pushed their way up from Harrow’s throat. “It’s monstrous,” she forced out, “– all of it, and so am I, all of me, all the way down to my atoms – my existence is monstrous.” She bent forward, head bowed, helpless against the crashing tide of emotion that had claimed her for its own, and Magnus finally brought his hand to her shoulder, a steady, anchoring presence that she leaned into with all the candid desperation of a drowning man clinging to a buoy. “Let it all out, that’s right,” he murmured, and Harrow did.</p><p>“Alright,” Magnus said a long few minutes later, tentatively patting her arm. “Let’s see if we can’t work out a fix for some of these problems, hm?”</p><p>“I don’t know how to fix any of it,” Harrow wailed, the last remnants of her dignity and composure finally giving way beneath the crushing weight of her despair.</p><p>“Well, no, of course you don’t,” Magnus said reasonably. “But maybe it’s not all so bad as it seems right now. Things have a way of feeling worse when you’ve been keeping them all stuffed inside for so long, you know.”</p><p>“Maybe.” Harrow sniffed again, her breath hitching, and wiped her nose on her sleeve, feeling hopelessly, embarrassingly young for the first time in a long, long while.</p><p>“Alright, where do we begin…?” Magnus hesitated for a second, looking thoughtful, then leaned back in his chair, taking his hand away from Harrow’s too-thin arm and intertwining his fingers loosely in his lap. “Well, for a start, I can’t imagine that you won’t do well academically, but let’s just say for a second that you do – the world will keep turning, you know. It won’t be the end for someone as bright as you. And I knew your parents well enough to feel incredibly confident in saying that wherever they are – they are remarkably proud of you, Harrowhark. They always were. They always will be. That’s not something that can ever be changed by letters on a piece of paper.”</p><p>“But – it’s not just paper, it’s the entire rest of my life –” Harrow managed, her words spiky and harsh with ever-mounting panic.</p><p>“Harrowhark.” Magnus’ voice was kind but firm when he interrupted her. “You are bright, and competent, and resourceful. I have no doubt that you’ll make a wonderful life for yourself, whatever happens. What’s holding you back – it seems to me that it isn’t ability at all, but guilt, and fear, and maybe the lack of a bloody good support network.”</p><p>Harrow took this in, her eyes still streaming. “I don’t know how to change that, though,” she said eventually in a little, pitiful voice so different from her usual tone of precise and sardonic command.</p><p>“Well, I’d say the first step is identifying the problem, and you’ve certainly done that, or we wouldn’t be talking about it right now.” Magnus nudged her knee encouragingly with his own, then sighed, exhaling his own grief to mingle silently in the air with hers. “As for the fear and the guilt… That’s somewhat all on you, I’m afraid, although I’d certainly recommend therapy. I wish I could take it away for you, but all I can say is that you’re not responsible for your parents’ legacy. Their choices were entirely theirs, as yours are entirely yours. You have to free yourself from that burden, Harrowhark, because it’ll crush you if you let it.” He paused, offering her a tiny, sad smile. “That’s the thing about the dead, you know – they’re quite impossible to satisfy. I find the best thing to do is to stop trying.”</p><p>“I – I can’t,” Harrow said, her fists clenched beneath the table. “I can’t.”</p><p>“Oh, I’m sure it won’t be as easy as I’m making it sound, few things ever are,” Magnus said matter-of-factly. “But – and I need you to listen to me, Harrowhark, this is important – I’m quite sure your parents would want you to take care of yourself first and foremost, but even if they didn’t, you’re <em>allowed</em> to. You have permission to live your life by your own agenda rather than someone else’s. You aren’t ever failing anyone when you work towards your own self-fulfilment. Please do try to remember that.”</p><p>Harrow breathed out shakily. Slowly, and with considerable effort, she relaxed her fists. She nodded her head, only once, a small but decisive gesture, and wiped her eyes with the tissue Magnus was holding out for her. “Okay,” she said, as steadfast as she could manage – which was, at that moment, not saying very much at all. “I’ll try.”</p><p>“Fantastic,” Magnus said, and he beamed down at her proudly. “That’s the most important step, you know. And if you ever struggle, you can always come back here and I’ll be happy to remind you.”</p><p>“Okay,” Harrow said again, face wet and sore, feeling thoroughly wrung out. “Thank you.”</p><p>“That’s quite alright, my dear.”</p><p>They sat in silence for a minute, Magnus kindly pretending not to notice as Harrow made a concerted effort to pull herself back together. At last, she gave one final sniff, shoving the damp tissue deep into the pocket of her cardigan, prompting Magnus to lean in again, still exuding an aura of fatherly concern. “That wasn’t everything you mentioned, now, was it?” He frowned again, fiddling with his glasses until they sat a little straighter on his nose. “What else was it you said? Ruining relationships…?”</p><p>“Oh,” Harrow said, embarrassed now that she’d calmed down a little. “It’s nothing, it’s just… I had – a <em>friend</em>, and I pushed her away when she tried to get me to open up to her, and I don’t know how – if I can make it better between us, or if it’s too late.” She glanced down to avoid Magnus’ piercing gaze, focusing instead on her jagged fingernails, torn and bitten to the quick. “I really don’t want it to be too late.”</p><p>“Hmm,” said Magnus. “I see. Well…” He paused, running a hand through his thinning hair as he searched for the right words. “Of course, I can’t say for certain that this person will forgive you, that’s rather up to them to decide. But – and you should know this better than anyone, Harrowhark – people are messy, and complicated, and nothing is ever completely over while we’re still living and breathing and walking around. Nothing is ever fulfilled. Not until the very end – and there is only one <em>true</em> end. And, as bleak as that reminder can somehow feel, it means there’s still hope. You just have to try, and see what happens, and then even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll know you’ve done your part.”</p><p>“My part,” Harrow echoed mindlessly. Then, intently: “To wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open.”</p><p>“Oh!” Magnus’ eyes brightened, and he straightened up excitedly in his seat. “A truly excellent writer, excellent indeed. And a good sentiment to take to heart, I’m quite sure.”</p><p>Harrow smiled – the barest quirk of her lips, but sincerely meant. “I’m sure your wife is lovely,” she heard herself saying suddenly. “But – I think you’re really good at this too.”</p><p>“Oh, well, that’s a very nice thing to say.” Magnus returned her smile, a true and heartfelt fondness transforming his features from plain to lovely, and that, Harrow realised all of a sudden, was the expression his face had been designed for. “Thank you very much, Harrowhark.”</p><p>“I just wish…” She shook her head, restless now. “It’s easier talking to – to people I don’t know that well. Like this, now. And I don’t know why. I just wish it was this easy with Gideon, too.”</p><p>“Consider this practice, then,” Magnus said promptly. “A stepping stone, if you will. Now that you’ve successfully opened up to someone, perhaps it’ll be easier next time – wait, did you say Gideon? Gideon Nav?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Harrow, confused.</p><p>“Ah,” said Magnus, sounding suddenly somewhat pained. “Well, in that case – if you do talk to her, maybe remind her to pay her late fees for the library books she’s had in her possession for the last six months and counting. What were the titles again, let’s see… Oh yes –” He cleared his throat delicately, reading from a sheet of paper he’d plucked hastily from a folder across the aisle. “<em>‘Satan Was A Lesbian;’ ‘Lesbian Gym: The Story of A Virgin Who Was Seduced Into The Wrong Kind Of Loving;’ ‘Her Private Hell: Can A Hunger So Strong Be So Wrong?’</em>…”</p><p>Faintly, Harrow raised a single, sceptical eyebrow. “Quite frankly, I refuse to believe those are real publications,” she said.</p><p>“Yes,” Magnus replied balefully. “They do seem rather unlikely, don’t they.”</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>After bidding Magnus goodnight and washing her face in the poky library bathroom, Harrowhark headed back towards her dorm. She felt immeasurably fragile, still, but buoyed somehow, having been given a mission, a new sense of purpose: whether for good or ill, she was going to talk to Gideon, and put to rest the agonised limbo that held her trapped in its awful sway.</p><p>Not before sleeping and showering, though, because she’d caught sight of her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she exited, and right now she looked like the devil’s actual ass. She hurried back along the trail to the Ninth.</p><p>Even with her eyes rinsed free of the emotion that had so recently clouded them, Harrow didn’t instantly recognise Ianthe when she first glimpsed her wispy figure sitting cross-legged on the low wall that bordered the path – not until Ianthe raised her head, her shrewd face revealing itself behind a sweeping curtain of colourless blonde hair. At once, Harrow stilled, a wild animal caught in the twin headlights of Ianthe’s piercing gaze.</p><p>“Damn, girl,” drawled Ianthe, the words coming out strange in her immaculately polished accent. “You look like total shit.”</p><p>Harrow considered this, thought about being insulted, then decided it was a fair shout. “Not the best night,” she said eventually, her voice still a little rough at the edges. “Or – week, actually, if I'm being honest.”</p><p>“Mmm.” Ianthe took this in, her expression unchanging. “You and me both, then.” Come to think of it, Ianthe looked astonishingly limp and pallid even by her usual standards.</p><p>“What are you doing out here?” Harrow asked. “It’s got to be…” She trailed off, realising she didn’t actually have the faintest idea what time it was. “Late,” she finished lamely.</p><p>“Went for a walk,” said Ianthe with a dispassionate shrug. “Ended up here.”</p><p>“At night?” said Harrow, belatedly aware that she was certainly one to talk.</p><p>“I like the quiet,” Ianthe said simply, turning her face to the firmament above. It hit Harrow with a disquieting jolt that perhaps she and Ianthe weren’t as dissimilar as she’d previously thought. Wordless, she turned and sat down on the wall beside Ianthe, pressing her heels back against the crumbling stone.</p><p>“So, Gideon, huh?” Ianthe said cryptically, her head still tilted back.</p><p>“What?” said Harrow, thrown.</p><p>Ianthe closed her eyes, her long, pale eyelashes fluttering mothlike against her translucent skin. “Don’t be an idiot, Harrowhark,” she said witheringly, her acerbic tone at odds with the calm serenity of the night around her. “I came back from vacation and now everything’s weird. Before I left the pair of you were gunning for the UST Olympic gold, now you’ve been locked in your room for a week like the total loser you are and Gideon’s been in the gym with Protesilaus alternating deadlifts and yearning. It’s gross, and Babs is mad because he misses his workout partner.”</p><p>Harrow grimaced. “I truly and sincerely hate that this is a conversation we’re having,” she said matter-of-factly. “But. Yeah. I’m going to fix it though. Or try to, at least.” She kicked a pebble loose from the wall with the tip of her boot, trapping it under her foot to prevent it from rolling away.</p><p>“You’re going to fix it?” A brief look of disappointment flashed over Ianthe’s otherwise expressionless face. “Damn. I had my <em>Come to Jesus</em> speech all prepared for you and everything.”</p><p>“Sorry,” said Harrow.</p><p>“Are you sure you don’t want to hear it anyway?” said Ianthe hopefully. “I was proud of it. It was all, ‘Ugh you’re so obsessed with the idea of your own outsiderness, Harrow, you don’t even realise when people inexplicably want to be your friend or like, date you or whatever.’ That was the basic gist, anyway.”</p><p>“I’m good, thanks,” said Harrow, wondering how it was that so many people seemed to have such an effortless read on her when for so many years she’d purposely held herself at a remove in order to prevent exactly that. All of that wasted effort: or, as the kids would say, ‘smh.’</p><p>“Hm.” Ianthe pouted, displeased. “Oh well. I’ll get my chance one of these days.”</p><p>“I profoundly hope that you don’t,” said Harrow.</p><p>Ianthe sighed. “Piss on all my fireworks, why don’t you?”</p><p>“I can’t help it,” said Harrow, deadpan. “It makes me feel all tingly inside.”</p><p>Ianthe raised a thin eyebrow, turning to look at Harrow. “A joke? You really have changed.”</p><p>Had she? Harrow didn’t know. She felt like a mosquito trapped in amber, floating transfixed in a glutinous resin the exact same shade as Gideon’s eyes, caught for all eternity between two states of being; living death, arrested motion.</p><p>Silence reigned between them, a silence in which Harrow found herself uncomfortably aware of Ianthe’s body in relation to hers, the minute gap between Ianthe’s thumb and Harrow’s littlest finger. She bore it for as long as she could, a slideshow of newly recontextualised scenes clicking together like puzzle pieces in her mind, then slid off the wall, brusquely releasing herself from the taut and expectant tension. Discomfited, she met Ianthe’s eyes as she straightened up, and Ianthe smiled, slow and resigned, wordlessly answering the question posed by Harrow’s silent, wondering stare.</p><p>“Well,” said Ianthe with forced lightness. “If it doesn’t work out with Gideon, and you’re in the market for a rebound…” She trailed off, shrugging as if it meant nothing to her either way.</p><p>“Why do you even like me?” asked Harrow abruptly. “We aren’t even nice to each other.”</p><p>Ianthe laughed, surprised. The sound was high and clear, ringing out in the dark night like a knife chiming against the rim of a crystal glass. “Oh, Harry,” she said fondly, as if that was answer enough.</p><p>“No, really,” Harrow said, persisting. “I’m not – being self-deprecating, or whatever. I just don’t understand.”</p><p>Ianthe shook her head, her long hair shimmering pale gold in the moonlight. “You forget that I grew up with Coronabeth,” she said, the slightest hint of amusement still audible in her voice. “I love my sister, Harrowhark, don’t get me wrong. I won’t hear a single word against her. But…” She hesitated, waving one of her sylphlike hands illustratively in the air as she searched for the right words. Patiently, Harrow waited, and when Ianthe spoke again the amusement had given way to an unusually stark sincerity.</p><p>“I was very much in my sister’s shadow, you know, when we were growing up. It made me something of an observer, I suppose… and everything Corona has – everything she <em>is</em> – it’s all so visible, unsubtle. Vulgar, even. Everyone’s always been drawn to her because she’s beautiful in the right way and charming in the right way and there isn’t any depth or mystery to it. After a while, it all just struck me as so terribly <em>boring</em>. So I suppose I like people who are a bit more complicated than that; whose attractiveness is a little harder to see.” Solemnly, she finished, then smirked, looking at Harrow’s dishevelled form. “Clearly I don’t really go for… <em>obvious</em> appeal.”</p><p>Harrow decided to ignore that. “You and your sister have a deeply, deeply weird dynamic,” she said instead, thoroughly meaning it.</p><p>Ianthe snorted inelegantly. “Yeah, I also like you because you’re kind of a huge cunt. And, you know. Samesies on that.”  </p><p>“I accept that,” said Harrow formally, after a short pause.</p><p>“Or maybe you’re just descended from some strange mythical creature,” Ianthe, ever the classicist, called as Harrow walked off, her tone at once rueful and gently mocking – whether of Harrow or of herself, Harrow didn’t know. “One that makes you irresistible to every eligible bachelorette in your immediate radius, even when you scarcely pay them any attention at all. If you ask me, science should be looking for a cure.”</p><p>Harrow flipped her off without turning around, her thin-lipped mouth curling reluctantly into a small but irrepressible smile. Her feelings for Ianthe were complicated, she knew, but she didn’t feel the need to probe them; in some ways, Ianthe was as much of an outsider as Harrow herself, her thoughts complicated and unseen beneath her saturnine face, and Harrow suspected that the simultaneous regard and disdain they held each other in had its roots more in kinship than in any other thing.</p><p>Within minutes, she was almost at the Ninth. It wasn’t a particularly warm night, but she pulled off her cardigan as she moved, letting the air wrap its cool fingers around her bare arms and relishing in the fact that she felt it. Her blood, awake and alive, sang anew in her veins. Her heart thrummed its insistent drumbeat in her chest. It felt as though the heavy veil between her and the universe had been ripped away, borne far from her by the flood of violent and cathartic emotion; as though she had been consumed by a being far greater than she, and then spat out, reborn. She could see it, now, the naked and terrible beauty of being alive in the wild and stupendous world.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The next morning, Harrow woke up feeling – if not back to normal, exactly, then part of the extant world again, at least. Her mood had settled, no longer a barometer swinging tempestuously between wild despair and the strange, manic intensity of the previous night; when she slid out of bed, her feet didn’t land on the knife edge she’d become accustomed to teetering along, but on worn grey carpet, surrounded by stacks of books and piles of discarded clothes. She showered, washing the remnants of the episode off of her body, then brushed her teeth, trimmed her hair with nail scissors, put on clean clothes – a series of small, innocuous actions designed to put her back in control of her abhorrent flesh vessel, at least more so than she had been for the last several days.</p><p>Eventually, though, she couldn’t put it off any longer. Bracing herself, she squared her shoulders and moved to the door, casting one last, disconsolate look backwards over her total shitheap bedroom. The door closed behind her like a full stop.</p><p>The walk to Gideon’s room felt strange, simultaneously familiar and terrifyingly new. She’d done it a million times before, but never with the single-minded motivation that was propelling her onwards now; had knocked on Gideon’s door a million times, but never with her heart pounding so hard as to leave its own fear-shaped imprint on the inner walls of her chest. </p><p>“Oh,” Gideon said, when she’d opened the door and clocked Harrow standing outside of it.</p><p>“I need to talk to you.” Harrow needed it so bad that her voice was fierce with it.</p><p>“Uh…” Gideon’s eyes shuttered briefly, and then she nodded. “Okay.” She stood back from the doorway to let Harrowhark enter.</p><p>“No,” Harrow said intently. “I have – something urgent to say… and I have to say it now, or I’ll end up not saying it at all.”</p><p>Gideon bit her lip, worrying it with her teeth. “Harrow, if this is a pity trip – don’t. I’m a big girl, I’m not about to make a big deal about how you could’ve been my fucking cinnamon apple or whatever. It’s really, really okay that you don’t want to build your Minecraft bed next to mine.”</p><p>“What?” Briefly thrown, Harrow paused, then shook her head frustratedly. “No. Shut up for a second, I need you to listen to me.”</p><p>Gideon sighed, her defences worn down. “Alright,” she said quietly, stepping forward again and leaning her hip against the doorframe, a motion Harrow had seen by now so often that the muscle memory felt like her own. This time, it made her knees feel weak. She shook her head again, irritated, bothered by her own weakness in the same way an animal is bothered by a fly that it’s shaken off its flank a hundred times already.</p><p>“My parents are dead,” she said bluntly, launching right into the meat of it. “They died – both of them – when I was fifteen.”</p><p>Gideon stood up a little straighter, but said nothing, and Harrow felt a quick flash of relief, so sudden and intense that it almost made her giddy. It was all the proof she needed that Gideon had caught on, knew what Harrow was trying to do; knew, more importantly, that she needed to do it in her own way, with neither platitude nor interruption.</p><p>“They were psychologists – academic researchers, really. They did a lot of work here at the university. That’s why they named the library after my mother. Posthumously.” She took a deep breath. “My mother, she got – she got sick, when I was really little. I don’t remember it very clearly, just… Just, it was quiet, for a while, and dark, and – and I had to be really good and sensible so that I wouldn’t make her worse. She got better, but I know it was hard on both of my parents. And then – then when I was older, she got sick again.”</p><p>Gideon nodded, still silent. Lacking her usual swagger, she didn’t seem to know how to hold herself; she wrapped her arms around herself, then dropped them again, letting them hang awkwardly by her side.</p><p>“That time, they found out pretty early on that… Well, she wasn’t going to get better. She was going to get worse, and then she was going to die. They gave her six months to a year, and I had to go to counselling to prepare me for her dying, and I – I was devastated, obviously. I was losing my mother. But, at least… I thought I knew how it was going to go.” Doors were unlocking in Harrow, doors that had been closed off for a long, long time. It was a dizzying feeling, at once terrifying and liberating, light shining at last into places that had been left to wither in the dark for almost ten whole years. She opened her mouth, tried to keep going, but faltered, crushed again by the unbearable weight of the terrible thing inside her.</p><p>Gideon exhaled, then said, her voice low: “What happened, Harrow?”</p><p>Harrow squeezed her eyes shut, talking into the blackness there that was easier to confront, somehow, than the person standing in front of her, listening intently as she bared her soul. “I came home from school one day, and. They were both gone.” She breathed out slowly, wallowing in the awful truth as it left her mouth and sat heavily in the air between them. “Suicide. The verdict was that since she was going to die anyway, and my father didn’t want to keep living without her – they just opted out of a raw deal. Walked hand in hand into the abyss, together.”</p><p>“Fuck, Harrow,” said Gideon, with feeling. Harrow opened her eyes, and Gideon’s face held the entirety of her trauma; a frozen, horrified tableau, like tire tracks on an icy road ending in a closed parenthesis of burnt and twisted metal, burnt and twisted bodies.</p><p>“The thing is…” Harrow said, then trailed off. “The thing is, I don’t know for sure that it happened that way. My mother – she was weak by then, her mind was really hazy, I don’t know if she could have made that choice for herself. If she did, I don’t know if she could have meant it. How much her consent mattered, by then. Maybe she did, maybe I’m wrong – but I’ll never <em>know</em>, Gideon. And either way – either my father made that choice for both of them, and he killed her, or – or they both decided to do it, knowing that I would be the one to come home and find them. And I know it’s not that simple, but – how do I forgive them, Gideon? Can I, even? Do they both deserve my forgiveness, or do they need it in the first place?” She broke off, throwing her hands up in impotent frustration. “Am I even justified in being angry? How can I move on, Gideon, when I don’t even <em>know</em>…”</p><p>“God, Harrow, I can’t imagine.” Gideon shook her head fervently. “I’m sorry, I don’t – I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know where to fucking begin.”</p><p>“Me neither,” said Harrow, with a tiny, hopeless smile. “I haven’t ever known what to do with it – how to feel. How I’m supposed to move past it. But it’s just – when they were alive, they were so goddamn <em>good</em>, Gideon. They were so smart. Their work was important. I didn’t want their legacy to just become the fucked-up way that they died, you know? So I – I didn’t let it. I kept up their social media pages, all the websites dedicated to their work; I still do. I never let myself talk about what happened to them. And then eventually that became normal, and I forgot how to talk about anything at all.” She looked up at Gideon, black eyes meeting amber. “And I’m still in that place. I’ve been in that place for so long. Almost in denial, I suppose, sharing links to my parents’ work as if they’re still around. I dream about them every night, or at least I did, until…” She bit her lip. “…Recently. But it’s been all I think about, Gideon – death, shadowing my every step. I think about how easy it was for my parents to just let go, in the end, and I wonder if it would be that easy for me… And, you know, maybe that’s all life is, just presumption and dumb will, and if only I could stop holding on so tight –” She laughed, helpless and bitter. “God damn it, Gideon, I wanted to die so bad I based every last bit of my university work on it.”</p><p>“Harrow –” Gideon’s face was stricken, and all of a sudden Harrow realised she couldn’t be there anymore, her innermost self laid so bare and exposed in the bright morning light. She had emptied herself, completely and utterly; vomited her innards in a steaming pile on the carpet, then offered them up to Gideon as if what she held was a gift. The staggering immensity of it hit her all at once. “I’m sorry, I have to – I have to go,” she said unsteadily, stumbling back from the door on shaky legs.</p><p>“Harrow – Harrow, wait!” Gideon called after her as she turned and fled, but Harrow didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The river ran alongside campus, far from most of the university buildings but only a five-minute walk from the isolated Ninth. It was quiet there, behind the treeline, the only sound the rushing of the water as it followed its course to the faraway sea.  </p><p>Harrow sat on the river bank, the tips of her boots pressed into the loose and crumbling earth. She felt hollowed out; a dead tree whose unmarked trunk masked the deep and rotten chasm inside. Had it helped, allowing Gideon to see inside her, or had it just caused her sickness to spread, tarry tendrils of disease reaching out from person to person, marking them with its unmistakeable taint? She remembered again Gideon’s expression of wide-eyed shock and shut her eyes tight in distress, wishing for her mother’s bone-dead hands to reach in and pluck the image from her mind. Monstrous, monstrous existence.</p><p>“Harrow.”</p><p>Harrow opened her eyes. Gideon was standing at the edge of the clearing, breathing hard. She was wearing a rumpled hoodie, the hem twisted as though she’d pulled it on hastily as she left her bedroom, sweatpants hanging low on her hips, and her hair was mussed even more than it usually was, strands of red hanging down limply into her face.</p><p>“Christ, Harrow. I didn’t know you could even move that fast.”</p><p>Harrow said nothing, and turned her face back to the water.</p><p>From behind her, she heard a sigh, then footsteps trampling ungracefully through the undergrowth. In the corner of her eye, she saw Gideon drop down heavily beside her. For a moment, they sat together in silence.</p><p>“It’s quiet here,” Gideon said contemplatively. “Peaceful.”</p><p>“I like it.” Harrow’s voice was a vacant monotone.</p><p>“You would,” said Gideon affectionately. “It completely sucks, though. All this fucking <em>nature</em>. Boring as shit.”</p><p>Harrow turned her head slightly, just enough to see the corner of Gideon’s <em>gotcha</em> grin. She felt the corners of her own mouth twitch upwards ever-so-slightly in response. “You’re such a philistine,” she said, reluctant fondness tugging at her heart.</p><p>“Okay so I don’t really know what that means,” Gideon said. “But I really hope it’s something dirty.”</p><p>Harrow huffed out a tiny laugh, then fell silent again. She didn’t know how to feel, anymore. The sedative effect of the oblivious river was gradually easing her mind, as she had hoped it would, but her insides still thrummed with leftover anxiety, and in Gideon’s presence she was oscillating between two warring impulses, torn between the oppressive safety of the cage and the fierce appeal of the wild and unknown. Let be, she thought, let be; and for a time she simply sat and breathed, the expansion and retraction of her ribcage no different from the ebb and flow of the tides.</p><p>Eventually, Gideon shifted, stretching her long legs out in front of her until the soles of her boots skimmed the surface of the water. She glanced at Harrow, her lips parting as though she intended to break the silence – as she was so often wont to do – and suddenly Harrow felt a pulsing, visceral urgency fizzle up from the boundless depths of her heart. “No,” she said roughly, before Gideon could speak. “Don’t. Don’t say anything.”</p><p>Gideon’s mouth snapped shut. Harrow didn’t even have time to marvel at Gideon’s immediate and automatic obedience, because she was already speaking, the words falling from her mouth before she could pick them apart in her head. “I’ve been doing this far too much,” she said. “Making people speak so that I have an excuse not to. And – and in the process, I’ve managed to really fuck things up between us.”</p><p>Gideon frowned, and started to shake her head, but Harrow reached out and clapped a palm over her mouth, feeling Gideon’s surprise in the way the muscles at her jaw suddenly tensed and became still. <em>“No,”</em> she said again. “Listen to me.” Stiffly, she continued: “I want to let you in. I do. You’ve – come to mean a lot to me, and I’m not sure how, or why, but the thought of losing you… It made me <em>scared</em>, Gideon, and I didn’t think I could feel – feel anything like that, that intensely, anymore. Because I hadn’t. In such a long time.” Gideon’s breath was hot against Harrow’s palm. “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose you <em>too</em>.” She stopped, breathing heavily, and her gaze met Gideon’s, hot and electric.</p><p>Slowly, haltingly, Gideon raised a hand, wrapping long brown fingers around the narrow-boned wrist that connected to the hand still clamped tight over the lower half of Gideon’s face. Gideon’s fingertips, callused and rough, pressed into the soft, delicate skin beneath which Harrow’s pulse counted out the at once finite and innumerable seconds of her life. Harrow’s breath shuddered in her chest; rendered again hopelessly mute she watched as Gideon pulled her hand away from her face, achingly tender, their fingers twining loosely together on the descent and then somehow not drifting back apart.</p><p>“You didn’t fuck things up between us, you total brainless idiot,” Gideon said, her tone glazed over with wonder, staring down at Harrow’s slender fingers lightly clasped within her own. “I mean – okay, you sort of did for a little while, but you had pretty good reasons, and I think I might’ve been kind of a dick to you actually –”</p><p>“Gideon, shut up,” Harrow said, breathless and impatient. “I’m trying to grow as a person here.”</p><p>“Right, sorry.” Gideon’s gaze travelled up Harrow’s body, wide-eyed and punch-drunk, and then her expression took on a troubled aspect, as though a dark cloud had passed suddenly over her face. “Wait – am I doing a bad thing?”</p><p>“What?” said Harrow, nonplussed.</p><p>“I mean…” Carefully, Gideon pulled her hand away from Harrow’s, drawing it back to the safety of her own lap and sitting up a little straighter. “What you told me – and then afterwards, running away down here – I don’t want to take advantage of you when you’re in, I dunno, a vulnerable place. And the place you’re in right now seems pretty vulnerable, I’m just saying.”</p><p>“I’m not weak,” Harrow said haughtily, straightening her own posture to mirror Gideon’s. Her fingers still tingled where they’d been touched; she balled them reflexively into a fist.</p><p>“I didn’t say you were, dickhead.” Gideon rolled her eyes. “Dial it down a notch, jeez. It’s just, you know, it’s been a big day for you, and you <em>are</em> very small – ow, <em>ow</em>, don’t punch me, Jesus –” She laughed, leaning back on her elbows to get away from the wrath of Harrowhark’s vengeful fists. “You know, I could just stretch my arm out and put my hand on your forehead like they do in the cartoons and you’d be totally fucked. But no, I’m serious, Harrow. What you told me – that was some messed up shit. And I want you to know that it hasn’t changed anything for me, the way I feel, you know – but that’s also not why I followed you down here. I don’t want you to think that’s all I care about.” She tilted her head to the side, looking imploringly at Harrow with earnest eyes. “I’m so sorry that that happened to you. I really am. And I dunno – maybe you should take some more time to just, come to terms with the fact that you told me about it? Because… telling someone, that was obviously a big deal to you, and there’s probably some <em>severe</em> emotional transference happening here, like – feeling excessively drawn to the person you just barfed out all your trauma to, or whatever.”</p><p>“Oh, did <em>Freud</em> say that?” said Harrow, grumpily.</p><p>“Fuck off.” Gideon reached out and lightly flicked her on the knee. “I’m just worried about you, okay?”</p><p>Well, it’s – gallant of you to care,” Harrow said, her tone measured and cautious. “Very <em>noble</em>. But no. No. I’m fine, Gideon. It was hard – it <em>is</em> hard – but I know what I’m doing. I know what I want.”</p><p>“I don’t doubt it, my sarcophagal empress,” Gideon said fondly, and sighed, looking across at Harrow regretfully. “But – and trust me, like 95% of my brain is calling me a dumbass for this – I would just feel better if, like, we waited a little bit before jumping into anything.” She bit her lip, the tiny line appearing again between her brows. “Is that okay?”</p><p>Harrow breathed out, exhaling her frustrations in a short, sharp burst, knowing that Gideon was probably right. Which was a strange thought, mostly because she didn’t think she’d ever had it before. “Yeah,” she conceded gruffly. “It’s okay.”</p><p>“Alright.” Gideon stared at her a moment longer, her gaze intent, the look in her eyes a silent love letter to Harrow’s odd little heart-shaped face. “Alright. I have to go, or I’m totally going to flake on everything I just said.” She grabbed a branch, pulling herself halfway to standing, then hesitated, torn. “You’re gonna be okay if I leave?”</p><p>“No,” Harrow said flatly. “I’m going to throw myself into the river as soon as you’ve disappeared from sight.”</p><p>“Wait – really?”</p><p>Harrow glanced down at the shallow waters, then back up at Gideon, raising one eyebrow disbelievingly.</p><p>“Okay, fair point,” Gideon said mildly, her cheeks tinged faintly pink, and she sprang up, calling out “Text me, yeah?” casually back over her shoulder, as though she wasn’t carrying Harrow’s heart with her as she left.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Harrow was running down a long, dark corridor. Lights flickered on overhead as she passed beneath them, but instead of providing comfort they only made her more afraid; with each burst of illumination she expected to see something monstrous and terrible, waiting for her to pass with arms outstretched to grab her. There was nothing, though, and she ran on through hallways that occasionally curved sharply right or left, each one as empty and desolate as the first.</p><p>And then at last there was something: a human form, prostrate on the ground and shrouded in black, the only indication as to its identity an untidy mop of orange-red hair. Harrow dropped to her knees, half-crawling towards it, terror curdling in the pit of her stomach.</p><p>Its face – <em>Gideon’s</em> face – was skeletal, decomposed, Harrow saw as she drew near. With a panicked, choked sob, she reached for Gideon, grasping onto her shoulder with one hand and touching her desiccated face with the other. A white smear of bone came off beneath her fingers. It was paint, Harrow realised suddenly, just paint, the skin beneath it fresh and pink and alive, and relief crashed over her in a wave so fierce it made her light-headed. Helpless, she felt words rising in her throat, and briefly she wondered whose they’d be, but then to her surprise found that they were her own: “I thought I’d lost you,” she said to Gideon, her voice raspy and jagged with fear. “I thought I’d lost you.”</p><p>Gideon’s eyes slowly opened, glimmering their unearthly gold in the darkened corridor. Slowly, she raised her right hand, wrapping it around Harrow’s wrist in an echo of her earlier gesture, down by the water. “Take all that you can, Harrowhark,” she said, her voice somehow distant. “But don’t take too long.” And she leaned up, pressing her dry lips to Harrow’s forehead in a gentle kiss that felt like a benediction. Harrow closed her eyes.</p><p>When she opened them again, Gideon was gone, leaving Harrow with nothing but the funeral shroud she’d worn and the ever-fading memory of her lips.</p><p>-</p><p>Harrow woke with a start, gasping into the silent air.</p><p>Almost immediately, she rolled onto her side, reaching out blindly for her phone. <em>Hey</em>, she typed, and then, in deference to the early morning hour, <em>are you awake?</em></p><p><em>gideon_nav:</em> yeah, what’s up?</p><p><em>harrowhark_nonagesimus:</em> can I come over?</p><p><em>gideon_nav:</em> now??? sure</p><p><em>gideon_nav:</em> is everything ok?</p><p>Harrow didn’t answer, but five minutes later she was pounding on Gideon’s door. It opened almost instantly, Gideon standing beyond it in a worn muscle tee and the same loose sweatpants she’d been wearing the day before, her expression rumpled in sleepy consternation.</p><p>“I don’t want to wait,” Harrow said.</p><p>“Okay,” Gideon said slowly, standing aside so that Harrow could enter. “Um, elaborate, perhaps? I haven’t had my morning coffee yet.”</p><p>“I know you didn’t want to jump into anything,” Harrow said, striding past Gideon and coming to a stop in the middle of the small room, turning again to face her. “And – I know it’s because you care about me. I know you were ready for this before I was, and I know I haven’t done the best job at seeming completely sane and well-adjusted over the last few days.”</p><p>“…Days?” said Gideon, one eyebrow slightly quirked.</p><p>“Whatever,” Harrow said impatiently. “But what I’m trying to say – I wouldn’t have told you about my parents in the first place if I wasn’t already sure about you.” She waved a hand in the air, encompassing the space between her and Gideon. “About this.”</p><p>“Sure,” said Gideon, her expression complicated. “I get that, but… it’s still a <em>lot</em>, Harrow, what you’re going through. I’m just saying, maybe you should take some time to deal with it before we –”</p><p>“Gideon, you don’t get it,” Harrow said, frustrated. “I’ve been dealing with it all – not just what happened, but with me, with <em>myself</em> – on my own for almost ten years. It’s only new to you. And, sure, my brain, it’s – it hasn’t been great, recently, and I’m still working on that, and telling you was a part of it. But if I wait until I’m fully healed – Gideon, I don’t know that that’s ever going to happen. I don’t know that I ever will be.”</p><p>Gideon said nothing. She sat on her bed, resting her elbows on her knees, and looked wordlessly at Harrow. After a minute, she breathed out, coming to some internal decision, and nodded shortly. “It’s up to you, Harrow,” she said. “Like you said – I’m ready. I’ve <em>been</em> ready. I just… I didn’t want to rush you, or pressure you, and I don’t – I don’t want to get hurt either. And like I said down at the river, you being a total basket-case hasn’t made you any less attractive to me, so don’t take this as me saying it’s a dealbreaker or anything, but what happened <em>did</em> kind of suck for me, you know, before, and I don’t want our relationship to be all – me trying to scale all the giant fuck-off walls you’ve built while getting shot at by arrows and stuff.” She shot Harrow a small, self-deprecating smile, numbing the slight sting of her words. “But I also don’t want to infantilise you, or make it seem like I know better than you what’s good for you, you know? And if you say you’re ready, I believe you. I just – I really need you to be sure.”</p><p>“I’m <em>sure</em>,” Harrow said. Cautiously, she approached the bed, and Gideon looked up at her as she drew nearer, her expression a shifting tableau of hope and fear and longing. She would be so easy to hurt, Harrow realised, and the thought sobered her, made her keep a few inches of space between them when she took a seat on the bed beside Gideon. “I – I don’t mean to say that it’s always going to be easy,” she said, forcing the words out past the creeping humiliation stopping up her throat. “The worst thing, the thing I could never tell anyone – well, I’ve already told you that, and that was always going to be the hardest part, right? And if I can do that, then I know I can deal with – with anything else that could be a problem, and it won’t be that bad. But I know I still probably need therapy, at least; I know I can’t just throw my hands up and say I’m mentally ill and expect you to deal with whatever fallout there is. It’s just… all of this, the way I’ve been recently, it’s because I’ve never tried to be – <em>intimate</em> – with anyone before, and it’s scary, it’s fucking terrifying, but I’ve realised that it would be far scarier to come so close and then – not.” She turned her hands palm-up, a quiet admission of surrender to the enormity of the feelings inside her. “I want it so much, Gideon,” she said quietly. “It’s why it’s been worth it, worth all the fucking suffering and the turmoil while I figured it out. Because I <em>know</em> now that I want it, and I’m sure.” Slowly she raised her eyes, only to find Gideon’s already on her, gazing straight into the heart of her, beautiful and open. Harrow exhaled a small, helpless noise – half-laugh, half-sob – and said: “If there’s one thing I should take from what happened to my parents, it’s that life is short, you know? It’s short. And I don’t want to do it on my own anymore, I can’t, because – because that isn’t living, and I’ve already wasted so much time. I can’t waste any more, Gideon. It’s unthinkable.” She finished, her voice soft, all of her feelings exposed bare and aching in the vulnerable spread of her hands.</p><p>“Okay,” Gideon said simply, guileless and sincere. “Okay.”</p><p>It struck Harrow then that for all Gideon’s swagger and bravado, she would never not yield to Harrow’s sharp points, her blunt edges. To the rest of the world, unbending; but to Harrow, always, she would yield. Harrow felt herself brimming over with an emotion she hadn’t yet named, and saw it reflected back to her in the soft set of Gideon’s mouth, her gently curved spine and unguarded posture. Not touching, they sat together on Gideon’s lumpy single bed, breathing in each other’s air as their fragile connection coalesced and solidified around them, forging an invisible thread that linked one to the other and would hold steadfast through fire and flame.</p><p>-</p><p>Eventually, minutes or hours later, Gideon looked away from Harrow with an oddly abashed smile and said, “Hey, you know, I got you something.” </p><p>“Oh?” said Harrow, curiosity piqued. “What is it?”</p><p>Gideon hesitated, then leaned over, retrieving a small envelope of wrapping paper from the floor beneath her bed. “I know you said you don’t do birthdays, but I wanted to get you something anyway seeing as you did for mine. And then things between us kind of went straight south to New Fucksville, so I didn’t give it to you, and – then I wasn’t sure if it would be appropriate, after what you told me about your parents. But –” She extended her arm, holding the envelope out to Harrow. “What you said a minute ago, about life being short, you know. I think – I think maybe this isn’t the worst thing I could give you, after all.”</p><p>Cautiously, Harrow took the gift from her, peeling away the wrapping paper with gentle fingers. Beneath the paper was a pendant on a long silver chain; the tiny skull of some small animal, partially gilded. Harrow drew it out of the package, cupping the skull carefully in the palm of her hand. “It’s beautiful,” she said, sincerely touched.</p><p>“It’s a bat skull,” Gideon said. “Like – like memento mori? Except for bats, so slightly less morbid. But… maybe it’ll still help to remind you that life is for living, while we’re here to live it. Ball is for balling. And so on, and so forth.”</p><p> Harrow laughed, quiet and surprised. “It’s beautiful,” she said again, and then, undoing the clasp: “Could you…?”</p><p>“Yeah, of course,” Gideon said. She took the necklace, holding it carefully in her hands, then draped it around Harrow’s neck, leaning in close as she fiddled with the catch. Harrow could feel the warm weight of her at her back, Gideon’s breath tickling the vulnerable skin at her nape; somewhere deep and hidden inside her, a small but insistent fire sparked into existence.</p><p>“There,” Gideon said, her voice unusually husky. She cleared her throat and sat back, pulling herself abruptly away from Harrow.</p><p>“Thank you,” said Harrow, one hand still absent-mindedly clasped around the skull. “I love it, Gideon, really. It’s perfect.”</p><p>Gideon smiled her crooked smile. “You’re welcome.”</p><p>They fell silent again. Harrow could still feel the phantom whisper of Gideon’s breath, raising the tiny hairs at the top of her spine. Her blood felt hot and viscous, pooling low in her stomach. All of a sudden she found herself reaching out and up, one hand resting against Gideon’s shoulder and the other curling around her neck, tugging her downwards until their mouths came together.</p><p>The kiss was hesitant, at first, and then, as it slowly deepened, so did Harrow’s desperation, her maddening hunger. She made a small noise that would definitely embarrass her when she remembered it later, her hands lifting and tangling in Gideon’s hair, the brief touch of Gideon’s tongue against her own sending a sharp jolt of electricity reverberating down the entire notched length of her spine. “Harrow,” Gideon said into her mouth, hushed and reverent as a prayer, and when Harrow pulled back Gideon said it again, helpless, following Harrow all the way down to the surface of the bed, her hands cradling Harrow’s upper back as if to shield her from anything that could potentially harm her on the journey.</p><p>Harrow felt like she was losing her mind, lying there on Gideon’s sheets, sheets that smelled like her – the sharp, almost masculine scent of clean sweat – with Gideon’s larger body covering hers almost completely, pressing her down into the bed like an anchor dragging her inexorably to the bottom of a dark and languid sea. Unhinged, she grasped at Gideon’s shoulders, felt her solid muscles shifting there beneath warm skin and shuddered with the desire that pulsed through her as urgent as anything she’d ever felt. Almost without meaning to, she let her teeth catch at Gideon’s lower lip, already swollen, and relished the way it made Gideon gasp out a heavy, shocked breath into Harrow’s wanting mouth.</p><p>And then, somehow, Gideon shifted, her strong and muscular thigh slipping smoothly between Harrow’s legs as if by accident. Harrow’s hips automatically bucked into the contact, her breath coming hot and fast, and then her body – a body that had gone untouched for so long, its myriad longings coldly and methodically suppressed – gave itself up to Gideon completely. With a desperate, cut-off whine, Harrow let the waves carry her away, shaking uncontrollably, her mind whiting out and her fingers reflexively clenching and unclenching against Gideon’s powerful upper arms. Then, all at once, all the tension flowed out of her, and she fell back against the bed, spent.</p><p>Slowly, Gideon pulled away, her eyes dark with desire and surprise. “Did – did you just…?” she said, her voice halting and breathless.</p><p>“Shut up,” Harrow managed, slightly embarrassed, her face red and her heart still pounding hard against the flimsy walls of her chest.</p><p>“Oh my God,” Gideon crowed, rolling off Harrow and staring down at her, amazed. “Harrowhark Nonagesimus, you’re <em>easy.</em>”</p><p>“Shut. The fuck. Up.”</p><p>“Who’d have <em>thought</em> –”</p><p>Harrow shifted to face Gideon, sliding her hand up the warm inside of Gideon’s thigh. Gideon, thankfully, shut up.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>EPILOGUE</p><p>
  <em>six months later</em>
</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>“Hurry up, or we’re going to be late,” said Harrow.</p><p>“Alright, alright, I’m almost done.”</p><p>“I don’t know how it even took you so long,” Harrow complained. “You aren’t even anatomically <em>correct.</em>”</p><p>“I love when you talk dirty to me, babe.” Gideon shot her a bawdy wink in the mirror, putting the finishing touches on her wonky skull facepaint.</p><p>Harrow sighed, exasperated. “You know what I meant, and don’t call me babe, I’m not a cartoon pig.”</p><p>“Babe wasn’t a cartoon,” Gideon said, dabbing dark eyeshadow in a clumsy smudge beneath one of her prominent cheekbones. “But you know I think it’s cute when you pretend to know about cultural touchstones, so carry on.”</p><p>“You and I have very different definitions of culture,” Harrow said sniffily. Her own facepaint was perfect, accomplished with the aid of the anatomy textbook Gideon had turned her nose up at.</p><p>“There,” Gideon said with satisfaction, drawing away from the mirror. “We match. Two spooky scary skeletons.” She pulled Harrow close to her, her hands bracketing Harrow’s hips, leaning down to deposit a gentle kiss on the tip of Harrow’s small and pointy nose.</p><p>Harrow leaned away. “Griddle, <em>don’t</em> – you’ll smudge it.”</p><p>“Mmm, jail for Gideon. Guess I’ll just have to…” – and she broke off, trailing a line of delicate kisses down the side of Harrow’s slender neck – “…do <em>this</em>, instead.”</p><p>Harrow shuddered despite herself, tilting her head to the side to give Gideon greater access, then dragged herself forcibly back to reality and batted Gideon away with both hands. “Okay, if we don’t get going <em>now</em>, we really are going to be late.”</p><p>Gideon huffed out an amused breath. “Harrow, it’s the university’s Halloween party for all students and faculty, I don’t think they’ll notice if we don’t arrive precisely on time.” Still, though, she conceded without complaint, pulling away from Harrow and giving her an affectionate pat on the hip as she went.</p><p>“It feels strange to be going back,” Harrow mused absentmindedly, her eyes on her own reflection as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I haven’t been there since I turned in my thesis, and that was before summer.”</p><p>“I know,” Gideon said. She paused in the middle of lacing up her boots. “But it’ll be good, you know. Everyone’s excited to see you.”</p><p>“I’m looking forward to seeing them too,” Harrow said truthfully.</p><p>Gideon smiled softly. “I’m proud of you, you know,” she said conversationally. “Oh, hey – taken your meds today?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Rad.” Gideon stood back up and draped an arm over Harrow’s shoulders, leaning in and kissing the top of her head, careful not to mess up her paint. “Serotonin, the good shit we love to selectively inhibit the reuptake of. C’mon, let’s get going.”  </p><p>-</p><p>It was dark as they trudged across campus, the bite of approaching winter making itself felt in the wind that tossed autumn’s dried and fallen leaves down along the pavement with a quiet skittering sound like the rattling of bones. Ahead of them, the Students’ Union bar shone like a beacon in the night, illuminating from within the grinning pumpkins and hanging skeletons some overzealous student had plastered up against the windows.</p><p>Naberius and Protesilaus stood outside near the door, drinks in hand. Naberius didn’t see them approach – he was gesticulating passionately to Protesilaus, saying, “…And then he turned into a pickle, man, funniest shit I’ve ever seen, you have to watch it…” – but Protesilaus nodded an amiable greeting, mouthing “Nice gains!” at Gideon over Naberius’ shoulder as she pushed open the door to the SU. Gideon grinned back, flexing her bicep like a douchebag and then doing fingerguns like a bigger, worse douchebag. Harrow rolled her eyes.</p><p>“I’ll get you doing push-ups eventually,” Gideon said complacently.</p><p>“You really, really won’t,” said Harrow with equal fervour.</p><p>Inside the room, conversation was loud, students in fancy dress mingling with faculty members, most with drinks in hand. Harrow immediately spotted Coronabeth and Ianthe propping up the bar. Coronabeth had made little effort for the occasion outside of the cat ears perched rakishly atop her flaxen head and the drawn-on whiskers adorning her cheeks, but Ianthe had for once upstaged her by making even less, wearing her normal clothes and sipping from a martini glass with a bored expression on her face. Noticing Harrow, she waggled her thin fingers in a loose approximation of a wave. The gesture prompted Coronabeth to follow the direction of her sister’s gaze; catching sight of Gideon, she beamed her radiant smile, her earlier mortification seemingly forgotten.</p><p>“Are you ever going to tell me what happened between you and –” Harrow began.</p><p>“No,” said Gideon cheerfully. “But I <em>will</em> go and fetch us some drinks – hang tight.”</p><p>“Ugh.” Harrow rolled her eyes again, more scathingly this time, then leaned back against the wall as Gideon squared her stance and forged a path to the bar. From her position, out of the way, she scanned the crowd, her gaze snagging on Camilla and Palamedes. They spotted her too; slowly, and with considerable effort, they ambled across the room to greet her.</p><p>“Nice costumes,” Harrow said as they approached.</p><p>“Thank you,” replied Camilla, affecting a curtsey. She was wearing a long, diaphanously old-fashioned dress, her usually unfussy hair bound up in fancy ringlets. “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,” she said confidentially in answer to Harrow’s unasked question.</p><p>“Ah,” said Harrow, turning to Palamedes with an expression of profound bafflement. “And you are…?”</p><p>Palamedes was wearing a truly peculiar contraption, seemingly of his own design. Straps hanging from his shoulders held up a barrel-shaped arrangement of chicken wire that surrounded his entire body, shrouded in turn by a not inconsiderable amount of papier mache topped with layers and layers of red and white crepe paper. Three or four floppy plastic tubes, painted red, emerged from the top of the wire construction, bobbing eagerly in the air whenever Palamedes moved.</p><p>“Percy Bysshe Shelley’s calcified heart,” he said proudly.</p><p>“I – see,” Harrow managed, taken aback.</p><p>“Bad<em>ass</em>,” said Gideon, appearing suddenly at Harrow’s side with two beers clutched in her hand. Camilla inclined her head graciously, then somewhat ruined the effect by saying, “We’re totally badass, yeah.”</p><p>“Oh – Harrowhark, is that you?”</p><p>Hearing her name, Harrow turned. Sidling up on her left was Magnus the librarian, trailed indulgently by Abigail Pent, a pointy witch hat sitting on her head at a distinctly jaunty angle. Camilla and Palamedes faded diplomatically off into the background, giving the newcomers room to approach.</p><p>“It <em>is</em> you!” Magnus beamed. “Heavens, how are you doing?”</p><p>“Yes, I’m doing fine,” Harrow said, caught off guard but pleased to see him.</p><p>“Well, surely you’ve had your results back by now, haven’t you?” Magnus said, his tone bright and eager. “If it’s not uncouth to ask, how did you do?”</p><p>“Oh – well, I passed,” Harrow said.</p><p>“She got a distinction,” Gideon butted in. “Literally couldn’t have done better. Mercymorn almost had an emotion about it.”</p><p>Magnus gasped, grabbing hold of Harrow’s hand with both of his. “Fantastic,” he said, his eyes misting over with pride. “Truly – wonderful, Harrowhark.”</p><p>“I know, right?” said Gideon, her proud grin even bigger than Magnus’.</p><p>“And what are you going to do next?” Magnus asked, his eyes wide and earnest behind his spectacles. “Could a PhD be on the cards, perhaps…?”</p><p>“Maybe,” said Harrow, shrugging her shoulders ambivalently. “But – not yet. I’m taking a little break from academia for a while, I think. Going to just… be in the world outside, for a little while, you know. Take some time to figure things out.”</p><p>“Well,” Magnus said, shaking his head in wonder. “Well. I’m so glad to hear it. And – what about you, Gideon, what have you been up to?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah,” Gideon said. “It’s all pretty good. I have an art exhibit coming up, actually, you guys should all come, it’s all about, like – subverting the male gaze, re-examining typical depictions of the female body from an equal perspective, you know, stuff like that.”</p><p>“You just wanted to draw sexy ladies,” said Dulcinea, passing by with a luridly bright cocktail in her hand.</p><p>“I just wanted to draw sexy ladies,” Gideon agreed, nodding placidly.</p><p>“Ah, fascinating, I’m sure,” said Magnus, masking his obvious confusion beneath a façade of supportive encouragement. He fell silent, smiling happily as he looked back and forth between Harrow and Gideon, then started suddenly as though he’d forgotten something. “Oh, I’m so sorry, where are my manners – Gideon, Harrowhark, this is my wife, Abigail.”</p><p>“Pleased to meet you – properly, at least,” said Abigail, smiling kindly and offering her hand to shake.</p><p>“<em>This</em> is your wife?” said Gideon, blunt in her surprise.</p><p>“Yep, he married a student,” Abigail said cheerfully.</p><p>“Abigail, please,” Magnus said, his expression slightly pained. “You know that makes me sound awful out of context – we went to school together, actually,” he continued as an aside to Gideon and Harrow. “We’ve been married for going on fifteen years now.”</p><p>“Darling, if it’s lack of context that worries you, I’m not sure it actually makes you sound any better to say you married me <em>before</em> I was a student,” said Abigail with a mischievous wink.</p><p>“Oh, she likes to have her fun, my wife,” Magnus said with a small, fond grimace. “Let’s get you a drink, sweetheart, shall we –”</p><p>With a friendly nod to Harrow, he placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder, steering her in the direction of the bar. “I’ll see you kids around, I’m sure,” he said as he left, Abigail turning back around to give them a cheery wave.</p><p>“Old people are <em>so</em> weird,” Gideon said, sipping bemusedly from her beer.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Harrow, smiling at Magnus’ retreating back. “They are.”</p><p>“Hey, how are you doing, though?” Gideon said, turning to Harrow with a concerned expression. “I know this is all probably a lot to deal with…”</p><p>“No,” Harrow said, surprised. “It’s fine, it’s good.”</p><p>And it was, she realised, looking out at the people who’d become her friends, the people who’d somehow nestled into her heart and made a place for themselves there without her noticing. <em>A bloody good support network</em>, she thought to herself, looking into the crowd for Magnus, but he’d long since disappeared in the throng.</p><p>She dreamed, sometimes, still, of things that made her tremble into wakefulness, things that grasped at her insides with ghostly fingers, but the spectres were distant, now, faceless and formless, disappearing piece by piece into the abyss they now belonged to. And when she woke, gasping and afraid, she woke to Gideon’s arm slung easily around her waist, the comforting weight of her against her back. A shield, standing solidly between Harrow and anything that might hurt her; a sword, to wound anyone who tried.</p><p>Yes, thought Harrowhark, she was fine; and with a gentle smile she reached her hand up to Gideon’s lovely face, smoothing with a single finger the worried line between her brows.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>oof, where to begin.</p><p>the books harrowhark quotes from that aren't named in the text are, respectively, <em>less</em> by andrew sean greer and <em>the goldfinch</em> by donna tartt. in the spirit of tamsyn muir herself, there's also a whole sprinkling of references to other media - books, song lyrics, tv shows, video games, not even counting the memes/vines/jokes I cribbed from tumblr posts - and I might do a post on tumblr to list &amp; explain them all if there's interest, but until then, if you're reading and you think you spot a reference to something else, hell yeah it probably is &amp; good job for noticing it. (ETA: i made the tumblr post, <a href="https://opinionhaver69.tumblr.com/post/628817782417555456/okay-i-said-if-there-was-interest-i-would-think">here it is</a>)</p><p>if you've been around online for long enough, some of you probably recognised the description of ianthe's birthday gift to gideon. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcDgOGC5Lcc">it is, blessedly, real.</a> the coronabeth window incident was inspired by <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/599vx8/five-questions-about-the-tinder-poo-window-incident">this</a> (CW: UNSANITARY, GROSS) but it's left ambiguous in the fic because I know not everyone will find it as funny as I do (on account of how it's revolting) so if you're one of those people feel absolutely free to make something else up instead. </p><p>lastly, you can find me on tumblr <a href="http://opinionhaver69.tumblr.com">here</a>, and on twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/apocryphai">here</a>! I desperately need more locked tomb mutuals on tumblr so [fingerguns]</p></blockquote></div></div>
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